Chapter 55
stay warm, beloved ghost
the fire is dipping lower
night still calls you home
—Southern funeral prayer
Digging. So much of power lay in the willingness to dig – in earth, in minds, under skin.
Pulling truth into the light, turning it white and slick against the sun and then learning to use it.
Crowkisser hadn’t had much to go on at first, some vague memory of her father sitting her on his knee, combing tangles from her hair.
That birch sap smell he always used to pull home from the Aestering.
Light little kisses on her neck. Her mother tickling her toes slyly with an open hand as she passed, making her squirm.
She’d felt so safe then, had barely stopped to absorb the tales of ruins, of buried civilisations, sunk down and down into the earth, each more fantastical than the last, sometimes wondrous, sometimes terrible.
Legends of hollow cities spun around underground suns, their roofs held aloft by great brass spinners that groaned and shuddered with the weight of the earth above, and the strain of pushing air down into the ground.
She’d had no clue who had lived in those cities, if they had ever in truth existed.
Just a vague, confused memory of feeling her heart flutter in her chest at the tales.
Watching the excitement and wonder hang on her father’s lips before her mother called them out into reality again, to pluck a bird, to rinse bloody hands in hot water, to twine her fingers with her daughter’s and play forest princess with the salvaged, prettiest feathers.
No, the great cities were either gone or buried, deep and distant, beyond her reach.
She’d never heard a whisper of them, though she’d scoured the libraries of the south for a full year, following hints of names and the half-erased traces of old maps.
She took what she needed from those shelves, and then when she could get no further beyond tight lips and tighter attitudes, she’d taken the rest of what she needed on the point of a knife.
She’d never picked up much of shroudweaving, but in those blank wolf years after her mother’s death she’d tried to revisit what her father had taught her and found she remembered enough.
Red thread for binding; enough of it and you could hold a soul into flesh that desperately wanted to die.
Make it tell you anything just for the relief, for the promise of release.
But even that small gesture made her so very tired.
She had no idea how her father did it. Ten minutes of questions and she’d been racked with the weight of it, every muscle in her body shuddering in protest at the reflected suffering.
He must have had a trick or two. Or maybe he just knew how to hold pain.
Not like the hapless targets of her questions. Despite their suffering, she’d felt next to nothing for them, something inside her scoured blank by the thought of her mum long gone. Somewhere deep beneath that memory lurked a hollow loss she didn’t ever dare touch. She never dug there.
Her mum, who had loved her curious girl.
stay warm
beloved ghost
A summer’s day, years ago, and she’s bent over an insect, stretching it out towards Crowkisser; the girl who would be Crowkisser.
Whatever her name had been before she’d torn it loose.
Her mum points at the creature, delicately.
‘See how he turns. See the joints at each angle.’ She gives a gentle flick to the insect’s bright green head.
‘See how he pulls tight to protect himself?’
Crowkisser had pressed her face up close, then screamed in indignation when tiny pincers found the soft part of her nose.
Her mum had laughed, gently wiggled the beast free and sent it into the grass. She’d held Crowkisser tight, wiped her bloody nose on her skirt; hunkered down, knees out and rubbed her shoulders consolingly, with just the faintest hint of laughter hidden behind a sympathetic pout.
‘Little bird. There’s a lesson there though. What do you think it is?’
Crowkisser had pouted, scuffed the dirt at her feet, not wanting to answer, wanting to stay in that moment, with the dry dust on her shoes, the sun on her back and her mum hanging in the light of her eyes, feeling the warmth of her hands and the blackbird shine of her hair.
She’d answered anyway. ‘Don’t pester ’em.’
Her mother had shrugged and smiled. A little pit blossomed in Crowkisser’s stomach. The wrong answer?
Her mum pulled her close, pressed her forehead against hers. ‘Baby, there’s always going to be things, people in the world that don’t want you to pester them. You know that, right?’
Crowkisser had nodded, even though she hadn’t.
Her mum had grinned that wicked grin she gave Crowkisser’s dad sometimes, when Kisser had said something cheeky.
‘They’ll always try to put you off if you get too close.
’ She’d made her hands into pincers, tickled her daughter’s sides.
‘Nip you, get you all kinds of nasty ways. But’ – and her eyes went wide and serious – ‘but tell me something.’ She flicked the cut on Kisser’s nose.
A squeal. The tiniest bit of blood.
‘Did that hurt?’
Crowkisser nodded. Furious. Betrayed. Small hands clenching. Her mum tilted her lowering chin up to meet her eyes. ‘But you’re still standing?’
She nodded again. Her mum kissed her head, and she felt the fury vanish like rain.
‘That’s all it takes, little bird. Stay standing after they lash out. That’s all you need to do.’
She reached into the grass and dug around, lifted a rock. ‘After that, what you do in return is up to you.’
She handed the stone to Crowkisser, rough and too big in her palm. Pointed to where even now the green bug roamed the path, unaware of its crime. Looked at her daughter. ‘There he is. And you’re still standing. So, what are you going to do?’
Crowkisser bent down to look at the bug, its carapace still emerald against the light, but struck through with colours she hadn’t noticed before. Purple, blue, fading again to green. She raised the rock, looked at her mum.
Her mother shrugged. ‘If you want, little bird.’
She looked at the rock again, at the weight of it, and then at the bug, and its joints and the sun on the path. As she set it down she felt a brief ache in her muscles as her mum gently took her hand.
‘OK, little bird.’ She squeezed Crowkisser’s fingers and ran a hand over the small of her back. ‘Why not? It bit you after all.’
Crowkisser rubbed the drying scab. ‘Doesn’t matter, Mum. Bugs bite. It’s all they know to do.’
Her mother lifted her onto her shoulders. Whispered into her cheek. ‘You don’t blame them for that?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s how they are, Mama.’
She’d laughed at that. ‘I love you, bird button. But,’ she’d said, slinging her piggyback, ‘I know what you are.’
‘What’s that, Mama?’ she’d asked.
‘Hungry,’ her mum replied. ‘Let’s see what your father thinks to fish stew.’
Long strides down the path.
Long strides into her life.
Her mother the teacher.
Her mother the joker.
Her mother the host.
Her mother the memory.
the fire is dipping lower
night still calls you home
The rocks she’d lifted since. For if the great cities had never shown their face, she’d followed their trail through generations before her, following the work of other hunters that wanted to know about the worlds buried beneath their own, and in the process, she’d stumbled on something else, guided by book and map and blade.
Hidden far beneath where the great spinners might have lain. Through structures dug so far under the skin of the earth that she forgot the shape of the sun. Then curving back up to the surface, emerging shyly from under waterfalls, and between clefts in cliffs.
She found herself exploring not cities, but caverns. Networks that hollowed the land. And in them, she’d unearthed more than memories; paintings, relics, traces of people. And when she’d finally found what those people believed in, down in the dark, she’d come away more bloodied than ever before.
But still standing. She’d peeled back the skin of that blasted world, and taken its power.
Crowkisser had known since her mother died what she was going to do. She was going to kill the gods. And the people of the darkness, in the painted caves beneath the earth, had given her the gift she needed to do it.
the fire is dipping lower
night still calls you home