Chapter Twenty-Seven
They crash to a stop when they can no longer continue.
Even Nuada, never given up fighting Geom, does not take his exhaustion as opportunity.
She falls to her knees and claws her fingers through the weeds and fallen leaves, digging into the earth.
Her head hangs low, face hidden by her long tangled locks, but there is no need for expression.
Her grief claws into them as her fingers into the dirt, tearing open the chasm left behind by three severed connections.
Vaire props himself up against a tree, pressing his temple hard into the rough bark.
It does not bring any grounding or sanity.
He cannot fathom the void inside him, like a cavern, a gaping emptiness.
The ache of separation but multiplied by such an amount that there is no pain to be felt, only numbness where threads were pulled so taut they were split apart.
Numbness and Nuada’s silent, screaming grief.
‘Sea,’ Geom murmurs. He must speak words, because nothing can be understood amongst the frayed chaos left.
Nuada lifts her head, speaking through tears and clenched teeth. ‘How did they know? How did they know how to kill us?’
‘I told Cadoc we have hearts that can stop beating,’ Dihen says. They stand where Kyarin had put them down beside him, still holding his hand.
She turns her gaze and her fury to them. ‘You made this happen?’
‘No.’ Vaire pushes off the trunk with effort. ‘We were talking to Cadoc. We found out the civilized gods don’t have hearts—’
‘Civilized?’ Nuada spits. ‘Even now you use their words?’ She stands. Geom reaches for her and she pushes him away. ‘I do not care if they don’t have hearts. They are able to die like everything else. They will die.’
‘Please,’ Geom whispers. ‘Don’t do this. I lost him too.’
‘Then you should understand,’ Nuada says. A swell of water crashes through the trees.
Vaire reaches for Kyarin but their fingers only graze before the wave hits them.
It swallows them whole and carries them, tumbling and pitching, as it fills the forest. Vaire’s chest cracks into a tree branch that doesn’t break.
He grabs hold of it blindly and fights the raging current to stay clinging to it.
The flood plunges most of the land underwater. Many of Vaire’s parts cannot survive the drowning. Any animals that could not outrun or outfly the deluge die as well. Nuada does not care.
And then, in a snap of pain and terror, his sense of her is gone. The water drops and recedes.
Vaire climbs down to the saturated earth and stands up to his ankles in mud, looking at the broken trees and torn up foliage, the unnerving silence of a forest devoid of wildlife.
Dihen and Kyarin are far off. Geom is in the mountains. There are no others. Half of them—half of him—lost.
He finds Dihen, sitting alone on a boulder. There are no words. Kyarin is still far. He does not want to be found. It does not stop Vaire looking for him, but the only direction that brings him closer is towards the human lands.
Kyarin would not be as foolish as Nuada. He would not try to fight the human gods. This knowledge does not quell the heart-splitting fear. Vaire sprints across devastated landscape, houses and crops torn up and left in strewn pieces alongside waterlogged bodies. Dihen follows slower behind.
He collides into Kyarin running towards him and falls into his arms. Kyarin takes the impact, closing his eyes as Vaire clutches his head and presses their faces together.
Forehead-to-forehead, then nose-to-nose, cheek-to-cheek, he fills the aching panic with the comfort of breath and skin, with the gossamer touch of Kyarin’s arms around him and the smell of cold darkness.
‘I have spoken to the human gods,’ Kyarin says.
Vaire stills from nestling into his neck.
‘They said they will not kill us if we become one of them.’
Vaire steps back. Kyarin does not let go. ‘What does that mean?’
‘They are certain they can get the humans to worship us as they are worshipped. But we must become human concepts. They said I can be a god of dreams and sleep.’
He breaks from Kyarin’s arms. ‘What?’
Kyarin is looking at him strangely. Desperately. ‘Or anything I want. Anything you want. We can become whatever you want.’
‘What are you saying?’ Vaire whispers, words barely a breath. The air feels punched out of his lungs. ‘You’re not making any sense.’
Kyarin steps forward and grips Vaire’s hands between his own. ‘The things that make us can be cut away. But the human gods—they are made of faith. That is their life force and it cannot be severed. It is the only way to live.’
Vaire shakes his head. It is not the words that don’t make sense, it is Kyarin speaking them. Speaking as though it is certainty, as though it is inevitable. ‘You’re saying to defy our natures!’
‘I persist. You survive. Those are our natures.’
Vaire stares at him, lips parted in incredulous horror.
‘Please, my shelter—’
‘How could you suggest this? Betray ourselves? Betray the others? They murder us and the first thing you do is join them?’ He cannot prevent disgust wrapping the words.
‘We cannot kill them but they can kill us. What other choice do we have?’
‘So you’d rather we kill ourselves and become what we’re not?’
‘It is balance,’ Kyarin pleads.
‘It is cowardice!’
‘Please,’ Kyarin whispers, voice strangled. ‘I don’t want to be without you.’
‘Then stay!’
He stares at Vaire, eyebrows cinched in pain, lips parted until they press together to swallow down whatever words were on his tongue.
He sinks to his heels, hands still clutching Vaire’s, and presses his forehead to their clasped fingers.
Vaire stands over him, a choking dread filling the parts of him that are left to be filled. He yanks his hand away and steps back.
‘Sulan was right.’ The ache inside Vaire grows, rushing in his ears, twisting his words to sharp disdain. ‘Darkness is only absence. It can never have substance. So pretend all you want. You have to be something to become something else, and you were always nothing.’
Kyarin turns his face away, letting his hair obscure him.
He does not protest or deny, but Vaire can feel the blows as if he were landing them on himself, every cut of the words, every sting of cruelty.
It is fitting, somehow, as Vaire has always been the one to take blows for him.
Vaire always stood against and fought back.
Despite the hurt, the shame, Kyarin does not.
What Vaire once saw as soft and heartrending is now pathetic and humiliating.
He knows Kyarin can feel that too, and that’s what hurts most.
‘You’ll really do this?’ Vaire asks.
He will. Despite everything, he will.
‘Pretend, then,’ Vaire says, voice as cold as the gripping chill rending his heart. ‘It will not make you one of them. It will not make you worth something.’
Kyarin’s shoulders slump. Vaire steps back, pauses. There is no plea to return to the forest with him, to forgive, to forget.
Dihen moves forward in Vaire’s place, taking Kyarin into their arms, and Kyarin leans despondently into them.
Vaire turns and walks north, every step a new bruise on a wretchedly brittle heart.
He goes to Geom.
He had sequestered himself deep into the mountains. The embrace of earth brings him comfort, though it’s not what he truly wants. The earth, the sea, the sun, the air—the elements still exist, but they cannot fill the void left behind by the dead.
The cavern is dark. A drip of water echoes further in. He follows the burning agony.
Leave me be.
We’re all hurt, Vaire tells him.
Leave. Me. Alone.
I loved them, too.
You did not love them as I love them. You were not made of them. They were not your world.
And yet my world is shattered all the same.
Deep in the mountain, pitch black turns to the soft glow of luminescent gemstones.
Geom is wrapped in a cocoon of crystal. Vaire sits beside him on the cold, damp ground.
The prick of Geom’s anger and desire for solitude fades to simple grief.
They sit together in it for a long time. Grief feels better than emptiness.
When Vaire returns to the forest, the waterlogged death had been reborn while he was away; dead plants replaced with fresh sprouts, washed-away moss returning to cover stone and bark, rotting trees replaced with growing saplings.
His growth, taking over and healing the aftermath of Nuada’s devastation.
But the absence of her cannot be healed.
Dihen had not stayed with Kyarin, but had returned to the forest while Vaire was away. Vaire does not need to speak his gratitude; Dihen can feel it.
‘He will not come out,’ Vaire tells him of Geom.
‘We cannot force him,’ Dihen says.
‘We cannot lose our last brother.’
‘He is not lost. Neither is darkness.’
‘Darkness abandoned us.’
‘He wants to live. You should understand that best.’
Understanding is not enough.
Vaire and Dihen spend the decades wandering what is left of the untouched forest and coastline, keeping it free of human destruction.
It is not the same without Kyarin. Though Vaire can feel his presence, far off in human territory, he cannot feel their hands clasped together, cannot feel Kyarin’s breath on his lips or skin on his skin.
The intimacy of their connection is only an illusion in an expanse that cannot be breached.
It is never the same again, but Vaire finds solace in Dihen’s company, as they find comfort in Vaire’s. The years pass, quiet, empty, but they are grateful for each other.
One day, in the mountains, a sleeping presence stirs.
Vaire’s excitement curdles to dread when Geom’s first emotion is fear.
He leaves Dihen to run through the forest, knowing as he does that he is too far from the mountains. But there is a chance Geom can hold them off, he creates the strongest material of all the gods—until a sharp tug, then crippling pain sends Vaire to the ground. Geom is gone.