Chapter 15
A crater lake fed by a mountain waterfall should have been too frigid to swim in at any hour of the day, but here in the Summerlands, it was only bracingly cold if I went in just after dawn.
I braved this breath-stealing plunge every morning, because Taran insisted that I wake when he did, and this was the only hour when I could go in and be confident that none of Lixnea’s very friendly priests would try to strike up a conversation while clad in nothing but a look of serenity.
I still wasn’t graceful in the water, but the lake was glass-smooth and clear down to its shallow stone bottom, so I found that if I spread my arms and legs in the shape of Wesha’s star, I could float on my back and look up into a pastel sky that mirrored the one at home.
With the water filling my ears and the scent of reeds in my nose, I achieved something like calm, with memory and duty falling away like gravity did.
Taran never followed me out here, which I was silly to find disappointing.
I must have been a passing fancy, because he never mentioned his question on the night of the new moon again.
I got polite distance instead, leaving me with daydreams where he waded into the water and confessed that he’d never learned how to swim, which would make at least one thing he’d told me true.
That’s alright, we’ll learn together, I’d say, and I’d take his hand, and we’d begin anew.
The daydream felt close to solidifying into an intention, but several weeks after we’d arrived at the house of the Moon, I hadn’t yet acted on it. I was lulled by the simplicity of life here. It felt like I had time to think.
Nonetheless, my tranquility was interrupted on this morning by an enormous black cormorant, whose webbed feet struck my diaphragm with great force and no warning.
“Having a nice time? All relaxed and entertained?” Awi hissed viciously as I rolled and choked on lake water and contemplated a bit of drowning.
That had hurt.
I hadn’t seen the bird goddess since our arrival, and I couldn’t say I’d missed her.
The bottom of the lake was too deep here for my toes, so I treaded water with difficulty as I recovered from being hit in the stomach for no good reason.
I’d borrowed a short, black linen shift from a moon-priest as a bathing costume, and it puddled around my armpits when I was upright, so my furious look at the bird wasn’t very effective intimidation.
“I am, thank you,” I snapped.
“Lazy girl! You’re supposed to be finding me a way out of the Summerlands, not lolling around and listening to moon-priest poetry,” Awi insisted as she bobbed in the water.
“You didn’t put a time limit on your vow, and Taran’s not exactly in a hurry to get me to the Painted Tower,” I reminded her, though I felt a stab of guilt for Drutalos, who by now was surely worried about whether I’d ever return.
Awi honked judgmentally, long neck swaying like a snake.
“You need to go now. Today. Make him take you—what are you waiting for?”
“Do you know something?”
The bird didn’t immediately answer, as withholding as always. I resisted the urge to squeeze her feathered neck.
“Is it Death?” I pressed. “Have you seen him yet?”
“No! And that worries me. He spent three hundred years acting the demon, trying to get Wesha’s attention, and he just gives up? No. He must be here, planning something.”
“I need more than that if you expect me to make Taran do anything except compare wine-tasting notes with Marit,” I said, still suspicious that she knew more than she was saying.
The bird heaved a sigh. “I did see something yesterday. On the Mountain, all the way to the east. Smenos Shipwright was cutting timbers, big ones. For the hull of a ship.”
“The Shipwright is building ships? Sounds like him,” I said, not following.
“Not since he helped trap poor Wesha in her tower! How does he think he’s getting through the Gates? Wesha would never let him pass. He came and asked her last month, was a real jackass about it. She told him no, uh, forcefully. So what’s changed?”
That was enough to make me frown. Smenos had to be one of the ones Genna was worried about, the Stoneborn who wanted to cross the Sea of Dreams and punish the disobedient mortals.
For all that I’d known this stay was temporary and I hadn’t come here of my own volition, I was reluctant to climb out of the lake and ask Taran about what Awi had told me.
I supposed that Awi might be right, and I was lazier than I’d thought—nobody expected anything of me here but that I’d take the occasional turn in the scullery or fill in if someone needed a mezzo-soprano to test their new musical composition.
Lixnea’s people mostly kept late hours, but she and the other two Stoneborn were eating breakfast on the veranda after I’d dressed. I slid in on a bench next to Taran, and he made room and passed me a carafe of orange juice without pausing his conversation.
I had decided not to feel guilty about enjoying any simple pleasures of the Summerlands.
And some of the pleasures of mornings at Lixnea’s palace were simple: trays of sliced fruit and cheese pastries drizzled in honey, the experimental harmonies of the moon-priests’ songs, the light on the calm surface of the lake.
Others were more complex, like the warm solidity of Taran’s thigh pressed against my own.
I didn’t think for a moment that he’d ended his campaign to add me to his retinue in a permanent way.
He introduced me to everyone we met as his priestess, like it would become true if he repeated it often enough.
And I wouldn’t give an inch on that. I’d meant what I said—I was never going to accept less from him than what he’d promised me.
I’d never be his priestess after wanting to be his wife.
But sometimes he touched me without thinking about it.
When his eyes were on the horizon or a group of actors performing a new play, his fingers would unconsciously seek to rest on my hip or my knee.
And I wouldn’t object. He’d look up, startled, after half an hour with his lips against my bound hair, and shoot me a suspicious glance, like I’d somehow snuck his arm around my waist.
That wasn’t a simple pleasure. It was a complicated one: a single rented room in a home that was supposed to have been mine.
Marit didn’t notice my arrival at the breakfast table: someone had mentioned a few days ago that he’d liked carving driftwood, so he’d obtained a knife and the raw materials, then taken to the hobby with gusto.
He had already managed the recognizable shape of a sea serpent with sharp fins and spread jaws, and he’d promised it to Lixnea over her gentle attempts to demur.
“Who could Smenos be building ships for?” I asked Lixnea rather than Taran.
The Moon goddess raised a faint white eyebrow. “Who did you hear that from?”
“Awi. She said Smenos asked Wesha to open the Gates, and Wesha refused. But he’s building ships anyway.”
“I saw that too, and wondered myself,” Lixnea said after a speculative look at Taran.
“Taran, was Smenos one of the Stoneborn that Genna was worried about?” I asked, afraid this really was the preparation for an invasion.
“No,” Taran said, voice cautious. “He’s angry that the mortals burned his temples, of course, but he has hundreds of priests here. There’s no reason for him to cross the Sea of Dreams.”
Lixnea didn’t say anything, but I could tell she didn’t quite agree. She saw the mortal world. She knew it wasn’t just a matter of burned temples but of all craftsmen falling silent at the queen’s command, when they would have once muttered prayers to Smenos while they worked.
“Well, something made him start building ships. He must plan for someone to board them, and the only place to go is through the Gates.”
Nobody challenged this point, though I could tell that Taran wished I would drop it.
“It could be Death,” I added, keeping my face straight and stern. “He’d want to recruit more priests, wouldn’t he?” I had made a real dent in their population, after all.
Taran tossed his napkin on the table.
“Stop worrying about it,” he growled. “If Death shows up on Wesha’s beach, she’ll chase him off again. And don’t worry about Smenos either—the boat’s probably for me. He built the one I took last time, and he can shove this one right back into the Mountain if he thinks I’ll go again.”
“Better you than Skyfather or one of the Stoneborn who wanted to wipe us out,” I urged him. My heart leapt at the idea that I might lure Taran home.
“Not you, the rebels,” Taran said smoothly and incorrectly. “And also not me, as in, never again. Darling, please recall that the last two Stoneborn to enter the mortal world were recently assassinated? Genna is right—let them sit in their mess until they come to their senses.”
I balled up my fists beneath the table, unable to think of a way to correct him without exposing our own part in the mess.
“What do you want to do?” I asked Lixnea, who was watching me with a rapt smile on her face, like a cat who heard mice in the wall. Secrets. “About the divide from the mortal world.”
“You’re the first person to ask me,” she said, with some humor and a chiding glance at the two immortals.
“Not even Taran has asked—I do believe he’s forgotten why he’s supposed to be here.
Well. I can see the Earth more clearly than the other Stoneborn.
I see the mortals suffering for the lack of our touch and blessings, and it pains me.
I also see how thin and small this place has grown without new prayers to fill it up.
So, I have to say that I would prefer to return.
If Smenos built ships, I would board them with my priests, and I would ask the mortals to worship as they used to. ”
This didn’t seem to be a happy thought, and Lixnea folded her ancient hands together.