Chapter Twenty-Six #3
‘She struggled for hours to live,’ Dihen says, quiet and calm. ‘Even after her mother abandoned her.’
‘Life always struggles,’ Vaire says. Dihen lifts their steady black gaze to him. He sweeps a lock of Dihen’s white hair behind their ear and kisses their brown forehead. ‘Until they settle into your gentle arms.’
Dihen looks down at the fawn, brushes her snout one last time before laying her head to the grass. ‘And back into yours.’
‘I am not gentle. I am patient.’ Vaire smiles and stands. ‘Will you walk with me?’
‘Of course.’
They walk across the forest into meadow.
There is a steadiness to Dihen’s presence that Vaire, encompassing all the chaos and instability of growth, appreciates.
So in that way, Dihen’s presence is a salve, only of a different kind.
It is similar to the effect Kyarin has on his mood, though darkness is cold, sharper, an invigorating kind of tranquility.
They talk of many things and nothing at all. They do not realize they are entering human territory until Cadoc stops them. Whatever small form he was using to hide amongst the tall grass becomes a man in an instant, blocking their way.
‘Cadoc!’ Vaire greets him. He had not seen him since their negotiations several years before.
‘Do you want to set disease across the population?’ Cadoc demands. Vaire blinks. Dihen looks up at him with indifferent calm. ‘The two of you together cannot pass through human lands. You agreed.’
‘We had no intention to pass through,’ Vaire tells him. ‘We did not realize where we were. We apologize.’
Cadoc watches them, eyes dark. ‘You need to be more observant of your surroundings.’
Vaire smiles. ‘I roamed the whole of the world before. It is a bit difficult to become accustomed to sudden limitations.’
Cadoc is unsympathetic to this, dismissing it with a flip of his hand, a human gesture. ‘It has been long enough. The civilized gods do not encroach on wild god lands.’
‘Civilized gods?’ Vaire laughs. ‘Is that what you call yourselves now?’
‘It is what mortals call us,’ Cadoc replies in all seriousness.
‘Well, it might seem long enough to you. You have not been around as long as we have.’ Vaire smiles and Cadoc’s eyes drift to his mouth. ‘Wait another century or two and a few years will be the blink of an eye.’
‘What is a century?’ Dihen asks blandly.
‘A human concept of time,’ Vaire explains. ‘One they rarely live to see completed.’
‘Not when you have a hand in it,’ Cadoc says bitterly.
Vaire tilts his head. ‘Are you not the god of them killing each other?’
‘No,’ Cadoc rejects, disgusted. ‘They worship me for courage and for strategy. And when they fight, when they do kill each other, it is for a purpose. It is not senseless, like it is when they die of disease, or famine, or cold.’
‘All things die,’ Dihen says. ‘Regardless of how it comes to pass, it will pass.’
‘We don’t.’ Cadoc looks them over. ‘And neither do you.’
‘One day, our hearts will stop beating,’ Dihen replies. ‘As all hearts do.’
Cadoc’s brow furrows and he glances between them. ‘You have a heart? Like a human?’
‘Of course.’ Vaire reaches out and Cadoc does not step back, allowing him to place his hand over his chest. There is no movement, no delicate flutter beneath the skin. ‘You do not?’
‘Why would we?’
‘But you breathe. You speak, and think, and move.’ Vaire shakes his head in wonderment. ‘How can you have no heart?’
‘Because the humans have not imagined it so.’
Vaire takes his hand. He is used to the long, slender hands of darkness, and Cadoc’s seems too wide and warm in comparison. He rests it over his chest, so he can feel the beating there. Cadoc’s hand lingers. ‘Without a heart, are you really alive?’
He takes his hand back. ‘Plants and trees have no heart.’
‘They do,’ Vaire tells him. ‘Even if it does not look or feel like ours.’ He thinks a moment. ‘Then perhaps it is the same for you.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘You must have a heart, of one kind or another.’ Vaire looks at him another few moments, the blanch of his skin and the toss of brown hair.
Vaire and Dihen—all the wild gods—came from the churning chaos of the universe.
But these other gods came from the unpredictable craft of human imagination.
Vaire reaches out to his face, and his warm cheek leans into Vaire’s palm.
He does not understand the guarded conflict he sees in Cadoc’s gaze.
Dihen’s small hand grasps his other. ‘Let us return, then.’
Vaire follows Dihen back the way the two of them came.
Kyarin senses his approach and turns. The sight of him—the sweep of black locks across his frosted shoulders, the flash of gray eyes, the familiar cadence of his movements—compels Vaire to a full sprint to close the rest of the space between them.
He throws himself into Kyarin’s arms, clasping him as though if he holds tight enough he could be molded to the shape of his body forever.
Kyarin catches him and uses the momentum to spin around in dizzying circles, the both of them laughing helplessly.
Stopping collapses them, turning clenched muscles and digging points into a loose heap on the forest floor, still shaking with laughter. There is no other outlet for the happiness and relief of being together again.
Kyarin sits them up and lifts his gaze to the presence standing unassumingly at the edge of their exuberance.
He opens an arm in invitation and Dihen accepts, sinking into it while Vaire untangles his limbs from the rest of Kyarin’s.
When he is only on top of them and not caught amongst them, he wraps his own arm around Dihen.
And they stay like that, wound together, as Vaire tells Kyarin about his time visiting the others and Kyarin listens with rapt attention, cheek resting on Dihen’s head.
‘You will visit them soon, right?’ Vaire asks when he’s done, brushing his fingers worriedly through Kyarin’s hair. ‘It has been too long. You cannot keep putting it off just because I can’t go with you now.’
Kyarin smiles. ‘I am not putting it off. I managed it by myself long before you came, my shelter.’
‘I know.’ Vaire counters his smile with a frown. ‘But don’t make me remember. I hate thinking of you alone.’ It aches in his chest. Even leaving Kyarin for the time it took to visit the others was a certain kind of agony. A more ignorable one, but that didn’t make it bearable.
Vaire takes Kyarin’s face in his hands and kisses his cheeks, his nose, his lips. He lingers on the last, until Dihen’s gentle voice pulls them apart.
‘I should go.’
‘No,’ Vaire protests, wrapping them up and squeezing tighter. Dihen lifts their head from Kyarin’s shoulder.
‘If I stay much longer, darkness and I will kill the soil.’
Vaire pouts. Dihen smiles and raises their nose to Kyarin’s, closing their eyes. Kyarin nuzzles their noses together. Vaire rains kisses onto Dihen’s face. When they finish their farewell Dihen untangles themself from the pod and wanders into the forest.
In the spring, the calm he is used to waking to is gone, replaced by uneasy sorrow.
‘What is wrong?’ Vaire reaches out on instinct and Kyarin gives in to his touch with equal measure, folding into his arms. Then he feels it, like a severed limb—a part of him, lost.
They have burned down part of the forest. Kyarin does not speak it, because he knows Vaire doesn’t need to hear it to know.
Why? Vaire stares into the trees. Beyond the leagues of trees around him is a foreign emptiness. The forest gives humans everything! Why would they burn it? He slowly stands and Kyarin rises with him, gripping his arm. He wants to see for himself. Kyarin doesn’t want him to go.
They are scared of the forest and the dark.
I’ll show them what they should be afraid of. Vaire shrugs off his resistance and starts through the woods.
It is a third of his forest, burnt or sliced down.
In its place are the curated fields of growth that humans cultivate, along with the little hovels they sleep in.
Vaire stands at the edge of his wood, Kyarin beside him, and looks out at the endless flatness.
Here and there is still wild growth, but mostly it is crop fields and the stamped-down dirt paths humans always leave in their wake.
Kyarin is grieved. It hurts him more; all that darkness, forced into light.
But Vaire is only angry. He gave the humans everything they wanted, he defended them, and in return they cut out a part of him.
He steps into the sunlight, away from Kyarin’s attempt to stop him, and walks through the cleared lands.
Where he walks, wildflowers sprout, and as he walks he draws trees up from tilled soil, marring the manmade landscape and returning it to its original state.
He spreads roots and vines over the human shelters as they flee in the face of his approach.
Cadoc stops him, standing in his way with a brandished sword, which is amusingly adorable enough to halt Vaire’s advance. Eithne and Cinaed stand at his sides.
‘What are you doing?’ Cadoc demands.
‘Restoring balance.’
‘You’re destroying lives!’
‘They wrought destruction first. This land is home to nature, not humans.’
Cadoc grits his teeth. ‘The southern lands are overcrowded. There is no more room for crops. If they don’t expand, half of them will starve.’
‘Perhaps they should consider breeding more slowly.’ Vaire looks to Cinaed. Her expression darkens.
‘The land is still yours,’ she says. ‘You share with the other wild gods, why do you refuse to share with us?’
‘The wild gods were created in balance to each other,’ Vaire spits. ‘Humans have too much will and ambition and not enough restraint or foresight. Until they learn that, we will not let them take over every bit of land just because they refuse to stop propagating. Now move aside.’
They do not move.
‘Please, Vaire,’ Eithne begs. ‘We don’t want to fight you.’
‘We won’t let you destroy everything our people have worked for,’ Cadoc growls over her, grip tightening on his hilt.