Chapter 4
The boat bounced. I had drifted aimlessly, becalmed, for a couple of days. Yesterday a thick mist had risen up and formed just enough dew to keep me alive, but I’d lost my bearings without a view of the sky.
The sudden lurch roused me to wakefulness, and I shook off my daze to find a seagull perched on the prow of my little boat. It examined me through one red-rimmed eye as though wondering whether it dared hop down and eat my face.
I fumbled for an oar and tepidly jabbed it at the bird.
“Go away,” I croaked. “I’m not dead yet.”
The seagull took flight in a rustle of affronted feathers, making one circle around the boat before landing back in the same spot. It settled down, seemingly determined to wait for my demise.
The changeless days and salt spray had clouded my mind, but not my instincts. With my swollen eyelids barely cracked, I mumbled the blessing of fire, managing a diffuse ball to cast at the seagull.
The seagull was not the most agile of birds, and I caught its tail with my fire as it tried to dodge. I had half a thought that I might somehow char and eat it, but that thought fizzled with my fire when the bird spoke.
“Fuck! Shit!” It swore both surprisingly and uncreatively as it hit the glassy water next to my boat to extinguish its singed feathers. “What was that for?”
Birds didn’t swear, unless I was closer to death than I thought, but immortals did.
Fuck. Shit.
“Who are you?” I sat up and groped for the surgical knives on my belt. I needed a better weapon for a sea battle than fire, but I chanted a ball of it into my off hand anyway. “What do you want?”
“Stop throwing fireballs and I’ll tell you,” the immortal yelped before diving again under the water.
I wracked my uncooperative brain for any tales of a god who liked to take the form of a seagull, and what they might do to me. No immortal was likely to be very happy with me, in light of the destruction of the temples, but obviously there were gods and gods, and worse and worser ways to die.
The bird popped up, waited to see if I had anything else in my divine armory, and then flapped back to the prow when I didn’t try anything else.
“I was just coming to ask where you were going,” it grumbled angrily.
“Who are you? Did I somehow pass the Gates of Dawn?” I demanded, hands still poised to attack.
“You ask a lot of questions for someone who tried to kill me straightaway!” the bird said in a voice I tentatively decided was female. “I’m Awi, to answer the first one.”
I pressed cracked lips together, wondering whether I ought to engage with the immortal. I didn’t recognize Awi’s name, but there were famously a thousand of the little gods, some of which had helped mortals before Wesha closed the Gates, and others of which had preyed on them.
“I’ve never heard of you,” I said, hoping to draw her out.
The seagull shrugged her wings in a parody of dismay.
“No? I’ll tell you, mortals don’t appreciate birds the way they used to.
Three hundred years ago, nobody so much as took a shit in the fields unless the birds flew west and did the correct loopty-loops first.” The bird’s shape blurred, and instead of a seagull, a large raven now perched on my boat, glossy black feathers incongruous in the middle of the featureless ocean.
She jabbed her beak at me. “Mortals used to worship birds. And now I get screamed at? Fireballs? All this time with only Death for company did not improve your manners.”
I tried to lick my lips, but no moisture would come.
“I apologize,” I said slowly. “For my bad manners.”
“You should,” Awi said snippily.
I waited in the hopes that she would say more, but I was a mortal dying of thirst on the open sea, and she was an immortal. I ran out of patience first.
“Where am I? Please tell me.”
After eyeing me with some curiosity, she deigned to answer.
“In the Sea of Dreams, obviously. Were you trying to go to the Painted Tower? It’s just that way.”
I tried to follow the point of her beak, but got dizzy when I craned my neck. I was about to pass out from this small interaction.
“I haven’t seen a priest come this way in years,” the bird added, probing for information. “Didn’t they all go up the Mountain three years ago?”
“I’m not going up the Mountain. I’m going to the Underworld.”
“Huh. Don’t know why you’d be in such a hurry when mortals only get a few decades before making that trip in the traditional way. Just wait a bit longer, and then I’ll eat you, and boom you’re on your way.”
I glared and put my hands together defensively, but the bird kept her attitude of benign interest, watching me through one unblinking eye.
“I’m going alive. I’m a maiden-priest. I’m going to see Wesha first,” I insisted.
This at last seemed to impress the bird.
“Business with Wesha? I thought you might be one of the rebels, what with the fire. Didn’t you burn down all her temples?”
I shook my head. “The rebellion was against Death. Who massacred every other maiden-priest. The temples were—just caught up in the war.”
Awi cocked her head skeptically. “So you’re a nice priestess? Loyal to Wesha? You’re going to the Painted Tower to serve her with modesty and obedience?”
“I have been modest and obedient. I will continue to be modest and obedient, if she’ll open the Gates for someone.”
“You need a big favor, huh? Who do you want passage for? Another rebel? I see all the dead ones come through. Maybe I know the one you want.”
I eyed her distrustfully, but she’d already concluded that I was one of the rebels, and she hadn’t tried to kill me yet. I had little to lose.
“Yes. Taran ab Genna,” I said slowly.
At his name, she stiffened, and all her feathers flew wide in a puff, turning her into the shape of a dinner platter. More news of the rebellion had reached the Summerlands, then, if she knew his name.
“I see,” Awi drawled, slowly regathering her avian composure. She shuffled her feet, red eyes flashing with guile. “I did meet him. Perhaps we could help each other out?”
“What kind of help?” I was instantly even more cautious. She was about to propose a deal, but I was not in a great bargaining position, and all promises made to immortals were unbreakable.
“You want in. I want out. If I vow to help you get to the Painted Tower, on your way back, you help me get out.”
“You have wings,” I said, hooking a thumb back in the vague direction I’d sailed from. “Why do you need my help?”
“Doesn’t work that way. I would fly in circles. Wesha still controls the Gates. I’m stuck, and so are all the other gods.”
“Are the gods trying to return now that Death is gone?” I asked, my heart lifting.
I could barely think about it, as muddled as my head was, but for a moment I pictured Skyfather himself striding through our dusty, barren fields, trailing rain behind him.
The Peace-Queen opening her hands to heal the war casualties.
Dozens of fertility spirits coaxing life out of the dead lands.
Blessings and plenty, after years of starvation.
Awi fidgeted, her eventual answer to my question inscrutable. “Well, this one is, at least. It’s been three hundred years, and I just want to go home. Look, can we make a deal or not?”
It would probably come back to bite me, but I was on my way to plead with a goddess anyway. The little bird was only the second immortal I’d ever met, but she seemed relatively harmless, and I was dying.
“All you want is my help to get to the mortal world, if I can convince Wesha to open the Gates?” I pressed. “And in return, you’ll take me to Wesha?”
Awi nodded vigorously, giving me her best reassuring wing flutters.
Well, the odds were rising that I was never coming back, anyway.
“I vow it to you,” I said, feeling a novel tightness in my chest as the promise sank into my soul. It was unbreakable now. I’d carry it the rest of my life, whether hours or decades.
“Fantastic,” Awi said in response, spreading her wings in victory. She pointed off the bow with her yellow beak. “It’s that way.”
“I need food and water first,” I said, sinking back down and closing my eyes. “Wake me up when you have some.”
“What? You expect me to fetch things for you?”
“If you don’t want me to die before I get there, yes,” I said, covering my discomfort at being indebted to an immortal with bravado. “The deal cuts both ways. Get me something to eat.”
It had to have been a long time since Awi was worshipped, if she didn’t remember that the gods had no choice but to fulfill their promises too. I heard grumbling and then the slap of webbed feet on the wooden deck of the boat as Awi approached.
When I opened my eyes again, an agitated pelican was peering into my face from only inches away, enormous beak slightly parted.
“Get away from me,” I snapped, shoving her back.
“You want food? I ate some fish a while ago,” she said, tone spiteful. “Open your mouth, baby bird.”
I swatted the pelican as she chortled to herself.
“Never mind. I’ll just die,” I muttered, thinking that Taran wouldn’t blame me for choosing death over regurgitated fish guts.
The pelican heaved a dramatic sigh and shook her wings in dismay. “You’re so demanding! Fine. Don’t die in the next few minutes.”
Awi launched herself into the air, nearly overturning the boat, and I marked her flying off in the same direction she’d previously indicated.
I was ironically gratified to see that the bird was telling the truth about which direction the Painted Tower lay in—the epics had taught me that the gods might keep their promises, but they frequently lied, and the way they fulfilled their promises was often worse than betrayal would have been.