The Awakened Kingdom

An Inheritance Trilogy Novella

N. K. Jemisin

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The Awakened Kingdom

I am born! Hello!

Many things happen.

The end!

Hello again! How are you? I am fine. I have learned more about Proper Ways from Papa Tempa. Papa said that what I did before was not the Proper Way to tell a story, so I will do it over. I do not like the way he says I should tell it, though. That is BORING. I want to make you feel like I feel! So I will talk like I thinked when stuff was happening, and I will start from the very beginning, when my thinking was not so good because I was extra new.

I am glad you are with me. You are new, too, and now we can be new together! We have much to learn, everyone says, but I have learned a great deal already! I will share it with you. See, here is what I learned today: how to speak to others without making them angry and how to run if I do make them angry and how not to blur myself into another so that both of us are lost and how to come close to MAELSTROM without dissolution and how to name all the names of all the pieces of EXISTENCE. I learned that besides Maelstrom and existence there is also NOTHINGNESS and it goes on for a long long way. Forever! It is not safe to go there, says Naha. She took me to the edge of the gods’ realm and showed me. It is very scary, but then so is Naha.

Do you know Naha? And Papa Tempa and Mama Yeine? You should know them! They encompass all the fullness of existence that the soul can grasp. I will take you to meet them. They will like you, you’ll see!

Hello! Mama Yeine says I do not have to say hello every time I see someone I already know.

Also, Papa Tempa tells me I am doing a wrong thing again. I am supposed to respect TIME, because that is a thing he has made for the place where mortals live, and you come from there. You might forget this if I tell it to you now, so I will tell it to you later and you will remember it when you reach now. That will happen in the gods’ realm, when you go there, which is where you are now, so don’t forget!

I do not know why you are confused. I explained it fine. OK! Now I will tell my story.

Imagine that you have just been born.

It is very confusing. (Not like time. Time is easy.) There is a lot of pain and messiness and then suddenly everything is new and different and cold and bright! And then something says Be and there you are. And while you lie there screaming there are hands that touch you, and warmth that folds around you, and there are voices, and they are familiar because you have heard them since long before your birth. So you are comforted.

But you scream again because the world blurs and that is when suddenly you discover words like agoraphobia and vertigo and you and other. You do not want to learn these words, but you have no choice! You know world, too, which you sort of knew before, except it once meant something entirely different. Once world was warm and dark and close. Now world is different, and you must start all over again learning how it works. This is not fair, but world—the world—is often unfair.

And then a really bad thing happens.

You were wanted! Mama and Papa and Naha wanted you lots. You know this, and you know there is a space carved into existence which is shaped like a godling, and that godling is supposed to be you! The hole was left when Biggest Sibling went away. By that I mean, he died. His name was Sieh. Now imagine you are supposed to be Sieh! Well, not really. Sieh is dead. But you were made to fill the hole he left behind—to be the Trickster and the wind, mischief and cruelty, the cat and the boy and the cranky old man. Imagine the Three have shaped you so, so carefully to match the hole. You will be different from Sieh-that-was, but you will be important in the same way. You will be powerful in the same way. The planets will follow you and the mortals will tell tales of you and you will steal all the suns, but only keep the ones that want to be your friend. Without a Trickster the universe will not end, but it will be a much duller place.

But when you are born, things are…different. Wrong. You do not feel quite of caprice and wind and man-ness. You try these things, and because you are a god things happen, but they are not the things that should happen, and they do not nourish you. They do not inform you. You are something steadier than caprice. Heavier than wind. And when you curl yourself into various shapes, it is woman-ness that calls to you, except when you make shapes that do not have woman-ness. (Like amoebas. I like being an amoeba! Glurgle glurgle squishchomp.)

You are not what your parents want you to be.

You are not what you want to be, because you love them, your parents, and you want to make them happy, and you just…can’t. In fact, now you have no idea what you should be, instead. You are incomplete.

It is. It is very. Sad. I was very sad.

But then something changed and I got mad. Because it was so unfair. I did everything right. I was born and everything! Life should have been perfect for me and suddenly it was not and everything was just, just awful.

So I went around for a while, mad. I made hells and kicked them and did not feel any better so I let them fade away. I asked Mama to help me make some life to kick instead, and she looked at me in a scary way and said that life was not mine to play with. She gave me some knowledge to study, though, and that made me bigger which is why I am not talking in quite so many exclamations now. But when I had learned it I was bored again and mad again so I went off looking for something else to do.

I talked to some siblings. Some of them did not want to talk to me but others did. One called the Dreamer told me that he had not been able to find himself for a long, long time—so long that he gave up trying, and thought it would never happen, and resolved to just be sad and empty forever. But then it happened. “It will happen,” he said, which made me feel better. I asked him how he’d made himself be less empty during that long time, and he said he had filled the emptiness with other people’s love for a little while. “But without love of the self, others’ love will never be enough.” I didn’t understand that part so I just nodded and went away.

Then I tried to talk to Spider Manysighted, and she just laughed and threw webs around me and talked gibberish and I almost died! I went away before I could. I don’t think I like her much.

Then I talked to Ral the Dragon, which was hard because all it does is spit fire and roar. So I tried spitting fire and roaring along with it, and it didn’t spit any fire at me, so I guess that was OK.

When I was done I felt even more better, but I was still mad. So finally I went to the wall of torn stars which is at the edge of the Maelstrom, and I just sat there and felt bad for a while.

And I thought: This is so unfair! I should be Sieh!

And then I thought: Why can’t I be Sieh?

And then I thought, ooh, I thought: Maybe I can make me be Sieh.

Oooooh!

There isn’t any rule against it. It’s what the Three wanted, and it’s important to obey them, isn’t it? Nobody said I couldn’t.

So I went back to Spider and I played a trick. I tied her realm to Ral the Dragon’s and ran away before either of them could see what I’d done. They started fighting! And I tried to laugh at them, to feel proud of what I had done, because it was good mischief! And that is what Sieh would have done.

Except…it wasn’t funny. Spider had been mean to me, but Ral had been nice, and…I didn’t like being mean.

I decided maybe I was doing mischief wrong. I tried again, this time sneaking into Elhodi’s Infinite Garden and switching things around so they bloomed out of season and grew next to things that would eat them and making all the flowers be polka-dotted. And then I waited nearby to see what would happen when Elhodi found it. I thought he would get angry, and then I would laugh, and it would be OK because I hadn’t met Elhodi at all and he hadn’t been either mean or nice.

But when Elhodi came in, he started to cry. Really! I felt bad then. I realized his garden had been beautiful, and I’d made it ugly, and…and…being mischievous wasn’t any fun at all.

I came out of hiding and said I was sorry. He let me help him put everything back, which made us both feel better. Then he said, “Why?” Or rather, he rustled a little, because Elhodi only speaks in plant, but I figured it out.

“I thought I could make me be Sieh,” I said. “This is what he would do. Isn’t it?”

Elhodi just stared at me for a moment, then shook his head in a bobbing, windblown sort of way. Then he touched me and took me back to the center of the gods’ realm, where the Three were just finishing whatever they had been doing before. When he spoke to them and left me there I thought I would be in trouble, so I stood before them and bowed my head and waited to be punished for being bad.

They sort of looked at each other and then all of them sort of sighed and then Naha and Yeine vanished and Itempas took my hand and sat me down.

“You do not understand your purpose,” he said, which I thought was silly because duh, I knew that, it was kind of the whole point.

He shook his head. “Not nature. Purpose. Why, not what. You misunderstand the reason for your creation.”

I frowned. “To be Sieh,” I said. “I mean, to be what he was.”

“No.”

Now I was very confused. “Why did you make me, then?”

“To live.”

I was even more confused! “I’m alive, but I’m not what you want me to be.”

“There is nothing that we want you to be, besides yourself. You are everything we desired of you.”

I really, really, really didn’t understand, so I shut up and tried to think about it and still didn’t understand. Itempas sighed and conjured an image of Sieh in his favorite mortal shape: tiny, mammalian, wavering a little between big-headed boy and spindly old man and sleek black cat. Shapes, plural; I had heard that mortals did not blur themselves the way we did. As if to emphasize this, Itempas fixed the image on the boy, who stared back at us with Yeine’s lively, deadly eyes. And because this was Itempas and he liked to be precise, I did more than see Sieh; I felt him, as he must have seemed to everyone who met him in life. There was so much of him! He’d been nothing like I thought. His soul was so heavy that everything was pulled toward him, everyone thought about him, every event involved him to at least a tiny degree. Wow! He didn’t feel like a godling at all.

I got really ashamed, then, because that was when I knew I hadn’t done my tricks wrong; I just wasn’t enough to do them right.

“What you detect in us is something called grief,” Itempas said, speaking very softly for a moment. “That is the wound left behind when something integral to the self is taken away.”

I gasped, finally understanding. “The hole! I didn’t fit it!”

Itempas is good at words, and he knew what I meant even if I didn’t know how to say it right. “It is a kind of void, yes. No one can fit the one left by a specific soul, however. Such a void is unique.”

So I wasn’t even supposed to try to fit it? I fidgeted. “Wounds get better. What makes grief get better?”

“Nothing. Time can ease it, but nothing ends it.”

That sounded awful! “Grief sounds like a bad thing,” I said, frowning. “Why don’t you and Naha and Mama get rid of it?”

“That would require removing love from existence. Do you believe it would be a good thing to do so?”

I thought hard. I loved Mama and Papa and Naha. I loved some of my siblings. I loved the wall of torn stars and the tiny glowing flowers in Elhodi’s garden that I’d helped him replant. I did not want to stop loving things. “No.”

He inclined his head, which made me feel very grown up. “Such things are better endured than avoided.”

I tried to imagine having a wound that would never heal. I couldn’t. I knew what pain was—I had felt lots of that when I was born—and it was a terrible, scary thing, but usually pain went away after a while. “How do you endure something that never ends?”

“That is something many of us are still learning. Gods are particularly bad at it.” He sighed and let Sieh’s image vanish into the swirls of ether. “Our grief suppurates unchecked and unfading for eternities. We invariably inflict new pain in an effort to ease the old. That tendency has caused so much harm to existence that we now understand we can no longer afford to indulge it.”

“Oh? What do you do instead?”

He conjured another image: a planet, smaller than most, wet, green with life. “We learn from mortals. They are small and weak creatures in so many ways—but in love, they are our equals. In grief, they are stronger.”

“Stronger!” Everything everyone had told me about mortals made them sound like funny little pets.

“Yes. They were made to endure death on a scale we cannot imagine.” Abruptly Itempas made a funny face. I had never seen his face be like this. “So lately, we have…attempted to…change. It is a mortal technique to…to counter death with life.”

Life. Me. Oh! Finally I understood, which was good because Papa Tempa was hurting himself to make me understand. He was trying, though, because sometimes it is better to change than to do bad things. And that was what he was trying to tell me! (It’s hard for Papa Tempa to change. But not as hard as it was for him to be alone, my siblings had told me, so we tried always to make sure he was not.)

But I squirmed, because something he had said bothered me. “You made me so you wouldn’t do more bad things?” Siblings had told me all about the Gods’ War.

“No,” Itempas said, and now he sounded strong again. “We made you because you are a good thing.”

This made me curl up and want to go back to the wall of torn stars. “I don’t know what that means, though.”

He inclined his head. “Your confusion and frustration are normal. This is part of life.”

“Well, I don’t like life, then!”

Itempas’s eyes sort of crinkled and his mouth sort of curved and he touched me for a moment, all proudwarm and firm. “Don’t let your mother hear you say that.” He considered. “Or Nahadoth, if she is bored.” Then he pulled away and gathered himself to leave.

I jumped up. “Wait! Papa—” If there was a Proper Way to be alive, he would know how to get started, at least. “I don’t know what to do next!”

Itempas paused, considering, and then he lowered his sun-colored gaze. “Perhaps it was the right choice for you to study Sieh’s life,” he said. “He lived better than most of us.” Abruptly he leveled a hard look at me. “Do not emulate him, however. That is easy, and foolish. Learn from him—his mistakes as well as his accomplishments. Then become yourself.”

He went away then. I still didn’t understand, but at least I felt better! That is why I like Papa Tempa best.

So I made myself some feet and kicked them for a while, and thought and thought and thought. And finally I decided what you probably know I decided because I have already done it and if I hadn’t I wouldn’t be here talking to you. I decided to go to the mortal realm.

This was really bad, because Naha had said the mortal realm was a terrible place where bad things happened to gods. Then she’d held me for a long time without talking at all, which I understood better now that Papa Tempa had told me about GRIEF. I didn’t really want to go to a place that was full of grief! But Sieh had spent a lot of time there, and the things that had happened to him there had been really, really important. Everyone said he’d gotten stronger there. And Mama Yeine had come from there, and she was terrible but also really amazing, so obviously the mortal realm was not all bad. So I decided I would go there, too, and maybe get stronger, and try not to die. I did not want to make more GRIEF.

In the mortal realm there is a world that is very special! This was the planet Papa Tempa had shown me. It is special for bad reasons, mostly, like killing a lot of us. But it is also the world most of us go to when we visit the mortal realm, so I packed myself up and wrapped myself in skin and some bones and stuff. I picked stuff that was different from Sieh’s, just like Itempas had said, which meant that when I became a big-headed human I made myself smaller and browner and girlier, and I gave myself pretty gold eyes like Papa’s instead of green ones like Mama’s. Then I took a deep breath with my brand-new lungs, and I went! There!

Now I will skip over some stuff that is not very important.

I did not mean to break that planet it was just in the way when I came into being and I fixed it and I said I was sorry and the planet said OK so since I’m supposed to learn from stuff like that I will tell you don’t break planets, especially the ones with living things on them, or at least fix them if you do break them. Also, don’t go in black holes, no matter how much they look like cute little Nahas. They are not cute! They are actually very bitey and kind of mean. Also just OK I do not want to talk about any of this anymore.

Hello! That’s better. Now I will tell you where you came from, so you can know what it was like for me.

I went to the scary Planet Where Gods Die. (It did not have a better name, it told me, sadly. I promised I would make up a good name for it before I left.) It has two big continents; since Sieh spent most of his time on the bigger one, I picked the smaller one. There was a big city there, and a place in the city where there were many mortals shuffling about doing mortally things. I made myself be in the middle of them all, and then I put my hands on my hips and said, “Hello!”

Also, do not do this to mortals.OK well it is a good thing to say hello. But you should maybe say it at the same volume little human-mortals speak, not the volume that big sun-mortals use. And you should maybe use a human language, because the universe doesn’t care about those and doesn’t try to say hi back.

So, um. The city. Broke, a little. And a lot of people. They broke, too.

That was really, really, really, soooooo many reallys, bad. People are not as strong as planets, and they cannot be put back together as easily. Once the Yeine of them is gone, oops I mean the life, it can’t come back. Which meant that I had made a lot of mortals die. Become grief. I felt the holes torn by their goneness! I knew they would not come back, and I knew I had been so terribly awfully bad that I might not ever be good again.

So I stood there in what remained of the market, staring at flat bodies and flat buildings and cracked streets and burning air, and I started to cry, because I didn’t know what else to do and everything was already wrong.

“Stop,” said someone, though, and I blinked and lifted my face out of my hands, because I hadn’t thought there was anybody left to talk to me. When I looked up, though, there was a mortal still standing! He had pretty long black hair and wore pretty bright-colored blankety things and he had his hands out in front of him with his eyes shut tight like he was trying to do something hard. There was something in one of his hands, a rolled-up piece of paper on two sticks, but that wasn’t what he was trying hard at. What he was doing was keeping the air still and cool and the ground steady beneath himself. But that isn’t hard! Silly mortal. It was why he was still standing, though.

“Stop,” he said again, this time baring his teeth, “sniveling.”

I was very, very careful to make my voice more like his as wiped my face with the back of one fist. “What?”

His eyes opened a crack; they were very very black and reminded me a little of Naha’s. “Shut up,” he snapped again. He was really mad! At me! “Stop crying and fix this.”

Oh.

I tried. I put the air and ground and buildings back to the way they were supposed to be, maybe they were a little crooked but at least they weren’t in pieces anymore, and then I tried to figure out how to fix the mortals. A lot of them could not be fixed. But the ones who were still breathing—I was scared to try and fix them. What if I made them a little crooked, too? Mortals weren’t very malleable. But if I did nothing, they would stop. I mean, die.

There was a kind of shiver and a folding and one of my siblings appeared! He shaped himself out of ether into something that looked like a tall, pale human man with flatyellowshort hair and eyes like methane ice planets, and there were weird things on his face, little circles of glass held in place with wire. But none of that mattered because he was wrong, too, and I didn’t really understand why at first.

“What, precisely, are you doing, Sibling?” he asked.

I had to try really hard not to start crying again. “I broke them and I don’t know how to fix them! I didn’t mean to!”

His eyes narrowed. “Ah,” he said at last. “You’re the new one. That explains a great deal.” He sighed and pushed the wire-glass things up his face with one finger. “One moment.”

Then everything sort of un-everythinged. Some of what happened was too fast for me to see, and that is saying a lot because, you know, I am a god. Something vast and incomprehensible as the Maelstrom passed near, and for a minute I got really scared! But then there was a shoop and a slurbt and reality shook some, and all of a sudden everything was back to normal! The mortals were all fixed, shuffling about again as mortals did, but they weren’t upset or anything, which was strange. The buildings were uncrooked, because—oh! oh, I got it!—they had never fallen in the first place! And the streets were uncracked! And the city was unbroked!

I turned to my sibling, who had folded his arms and was now looking around the marketplace through his glass things. I was so happy I wanted to cry again, in a different way. “That was amazing!”

“Yes.” This came from the mortal, who exhaled and let his bubble of cool stillness go away. Except it was still there, just a little, in a way that I did not understand. I felt it when he looked at me, still angry and lip-curled, and it made me stop smiling and remember that I had been really bad. The mortal smoothed the cloth that was wrapped around him. “Thank you, Lord Ia. May I also rely upon you to deal with your…companion? I’d rather not take up the matter with my grandmother.”

Something happened that I didn’t understand. Ia looked at the mortal. The mortal looked away, but I could tell that he had seen Ia looking at him. It was almost like they were trying to talk without words, but I had heard mortals couldn’t do that.

“Very well,” said Ia, after a moment. He folded his arms across his chest. He was wearing cloth, too, all in straight lines and white. It looked stark compared to the mortal’s flowing, draped colors, and uncomfortable! “Please give my regards to Fahno-enulai, then, should you ever deem it appropriate to speak to her of this incident.”

The mortal nodded, looked at me in an angry way one more time, then turned and walked away. “But I said I was sorry,” I said, in his wake. I did not like that the mortal had gone away still angry.

“Your regret doesn’t negate what he saw,” said Ia, “which was a godling abusing her power—destroying mortal lives out of sheer carelessness—and then doing nothing whatsoever to remedy the situation until prompted.”

He sounded a lot like Papa Tempa. Except, he sounded like Papa Tempa mad. I squirmed. “I tried to fix things.”

“Things. Not people.”

“I didn’t know how!”

“Then you should have called someone who did. Yeine would have been able to repair the damage easily; why did you not summon her?”

Oh. I. “I, um, didn’t think of that.”

“No, you didn’t. Instead you had a meltdown.” He took a deep breath. “You shouldn’t be here, Sibling. Go somewhere else and grow up a bit before you return.”

“But—” He was turning to go! He was so mad he didn’t even want to talk to me. I stood where he’d left me, with my hand upraised to try and get his attention, but he didn’t look back. After a moment he was gone down the street.

Everything was awful and I hadn’t even been on the planet five minutes.

Should I leave, like Ia had told me? I didn’t want to, but maybe he was right. Maybe I needed to learn how to handle mortals better if I was going to be here in a place full of them. But how was I to learn anything about mortals better if I didn’t meet some?

That was it! I would go and meet the boy who was mad at me, again. I would find out how to make him less mad.

So I ran in the direction he had gone. He wasn’t far; mortals are very slow! I caught up to him on a street that had a lot fewer people on it, but more walls and statues and an air of importance. The mortal boy was standing in the shadows against a wall, across the street from a big domed building that felt more important than everything else around.

“Hello,” I said when I stopped beside him. I said it very carefully this time, in a whisper!

He jumped and stared at me, first surprised and then—oh. He was still mad. Still really mad. “Go away, godling.”

I bit my lip. “But I want to show you I can be good and not hurt mortals! Please? I’m really sorry.”

His jaw flexed. “You should apologize to the people you injured and killed!”

“But I can’t! They got NEGATED.” That was the word for what I’d seen Ia do. “You’re the only one that remembers. It was scary, wasn’t it? I’m sorry I scared you, even if I didn’t hurt you.”

He stared at me again, then sighed and rubbed his forehead with the back of the hand that held the paper-on-sticks I’d seen before. “By all the infinite hells. Fine; apology accepted. Now leave. I have important—” Abruptly he paused. Looked at me. His eyes narrowed. “Huh.”

“Huh?” I straightened; I could tell he was thinking better thoughts about me! “Huh!”

That seemed to stop him from thinking better thoughts. “Gods, you’re a strange thing.”

“I’m not strange.” I scowled. “I just don’t know what I’m doing; that’s different.”

He blinked, then chuckled. “Well, at least you’re honest.” He took a deep breath, considered a moment longer, then said, “If you truly want to apologize, do me a favor, godling. Then I’ll consider all debts paid between us.”

I perked up. “OK! What favor?”

He held forth the paper thing. “I need you to take this scroll and put it somewhere.”

I took it carefully. It was even more fragile than most mortal stuff. “Where?”

“Look at me.” I did, and he took a deep breath, then yelled at me with his mind. I saw a place inside the big dome-building. A circle near its center, where a group of important-feeling women sat on cushions and stools and talked about important-sounding stuff. Not far from them, sitting in a basket nearby, were lots of scrolls just like the one I held. “There. Do you see it?”

I grimaced. “Yes. You didn’t have to yell it, though. I was right here.”

He blinked, then smiled. “Forgive me; I’ve never spoken without words to a godling before. I just knew it could be done.”

“Well, you should not be rude when you do it.” But then he raised his eyebrows, and I remembered I had been much ruder, so I felt bad again. “…Sorry.”

“Gods. Maybe I’m a fool to involve you in this.”

“No!” I inhaled and held up the scroll. “I can put it there! I promise!”

“Without being seen. You will need to—” He frowned, as if trying to remember something. “Dissipate your presence, I think is the wording you godlings use. Yes? Become your true immaterial self, take this scroll there, and make it material when no one’s watching, so that it’s just another scroll in the pile. All right?”

“OK! And then I’ll come back and tell you—”

“No. I won’t be here when you get back. I’ll know you did it successfully if…certain things happen. But I need to be able to say, honestly, that I know nothing of what you did within the Raringa’s walls.” Oh, yes; that was the big domed building. I could feel the truth of its name, spoken over centuries by many mortal voices, shaped by many mortal thoughts. “Seat of warriors”? I was not sure what that meant. “Just go, and do it, and like I said, apology accepted even if I never see you again. Especially if I never see you again. All right?”

“Um. OK!” He still did not like me, but at least if I did this, it would mean I had been good some, and not all bad. “OK, I am going now.”

“Good luck, godling.” That was a nice thing for him to say! I grinned as I dissipated myself. I was getting better at dealing with mortals!

It was extra easy to go through the domed place’s walls and into the big room with the circle of cushions. Nobody was looking at the pile of scrolls, so it was extra easy to put the boy’s scroll in among the rest. Then I stayed for a while, trying to figure out what the women were saying, but it was boring stuff about something called tariffs. I got tired from hearing it, and finally left.

The boy was gone like he’d said he would be, which was sad. But I had learned at least that bad things could be countered by good things! So then I decided to go find Ia. Maybe I could apologize to him, too, do him a favor, and be good again!

It was sort of hard to find him. I could feel other siblings of mine all over the planet, all glowy-bright and magic-smelling, but Ia’s glow was sort of subdued and fuzzy. He was close by, though, so I took shape again and ran to catch up, trying very hard not to bump into any mortals. That was hard because they were everywhere and kept bumping into me. I made sure I bumped into them gently, at least.

He was at the edge of town on the roof of a small building, looking out over the city with his arms folded. He reminded me of Papa Tempa, standing like that! I appeared beside him and said, “Hello?”

He didn’t even look at me, though his jaw flexed the same way the mortal boy’s had. “I told you, Sibling. You don’t know enough to be here safely. Must I force you home?”

“I…I want to learn how to be safe!”

“Not at the mortals’ expense. Learn it elsewhere. And grow up.”

“But…” How could I make him know what I was thinking? He was all bristly and fuzzy; I couldn’t mesh with him and share thoughts in the way I would have in the gods’ realm. I wasn’t even sure if it was polite to speak as gods spoke in this realm. I had to use words. “That’s why I came here! I want to grow up!”

Ia shook his head. “This world has suffered much at the hands of our kind. It does not need more gods who will view its lives as playthings.”

I gasped. I had never thought of it that way! The Planet Where Gods Die was also the Planet Whose Mortals Were Killed by Gods, Lots. “But mortals die all the time anyway, don’t they?” Then Ia turned to look at me.

OK. I will tell you now why Ia is scary. He’s really scary. He is one of the scariest godlings ever and I did not know this before I met him, and he gets really mad so that is why I’m telling you how not to make him mad and why you should be careful.

Remember waaaaay back at the beginning of the story when I told you about EXISTENCE and MAELSTROM and NOTHINGNESS? And I told you the nothingness is the scariest part because at least if existence kills you there is something, and at least if the Maelstrom kills you there was something, but if the nothing gets you then it is like you never were in the first place?

Oh, I forgot that part. Sorry! OK, if the nothing kills you then you become nothing. You go away, from whereness and whatness and thenness. You stop being. You never were. Nobody will even get the griefs, because there was never anything to remember. Understand?

I don’t know why not. I explained it fine.

Anyway, that is what is in Ia. He is negation; not just the end of something but the never-was of it. That was how he’d made the bad thing I’d done in the market go away; he made it never-be. He looked at me and suddenly I saw beneath the mortal shell he wore, and the fuzzy outline of him that had warned me against looking further. Now he let me see past the shell, and all the nothing of him was right there. Waiting. So scary that even the mortals nearby stumbled and looked around and started walking wider circles around us, with big scared looks on their faces. They could feel the scary, same as me, even if they could not see the scary of him or know what it meant. They could feel that the scary was super really extra mad.

“Mortals indeed die often, relatively speaking,” he said. I was shaking. I was so scared. “So do godlings. So many, really, that I’ve forgotten.”

I made my voice very small, and myself—the me that was me, not just the me he could see—small, too. “I didn’t mean I was going to kill anybody,” I said. “Um, anybody else, I mean. I was just asking!”

“Some questions are dangerous, Sibling. It’s time you learned that.”

Oh. Oh. So scared. “H-how will I know which ones I shouldn’t ask if I don’t ask them?”

“That comes with wisdom. Which you can gain anywhere else, with no one the worse off for your fumblings as you grow.”

“That’s not true!” I said. And then I stopped and clapped my hands over my mouth because, um. I hadn’t meant to say that. I hadn’t wanted to get in trouble again.

Ia is very scary, but Ia is also very wise, because Ia is really old. So he sort of squinched his eyes at me, and I knew that he knew something about me I didn’t know. “Hmm.”

“Huh?”

Ia didn’t say anything. But right then he took hold of the world and folded it and pulled me along without bothering to ask if I wanted to go. I was so scared that I didn’t complain, because I didn’t want to be nothinged. The place we went to was a between-place. When the world is folded and we are not here or there but both, that is between. I saw the market and another place, gray and stony, overlapping. Ia stopped us there, where it was suddenly quiet because mortals cannot be between, and where we could talk like gods without doing any damage.

“What isn’t true?” he asked. I didn’t think he was mad anymore. He seemed thoughtful instead, and when he folded his arms to listen I thought maybe he was really listening now, and not just trying to get rid of me.

So I took a deep breath and said everything the best way I could. “I can’t learn wisdom anywhere else,” I said, because suddenly I didn’t just want to stay in the mortal realm, I needed to. I knew it the way mortals with teeth know how to bite. “This place is, is…it’s right. I can feel it making me better even now! And, and I know you don’t want me to be here, even Naha told me not to come, but—but I have to stay. If I go back—” Suddenly I was unhappy. My eyes tried to get wet again, but I didn’t let them because I didn’t want him to think I was doing the meltdown thing again. It was really hard not to cry, though. I bit my lip instead. I hurt all over! It was worse than being scared.

Ia lifted one yellow eyebrow. “Go on.”

“I was supposed to be Sieh. But I’m not Sieh. And I tried to be Sieh, except Sieh is dead so I mean I wanted to be the space that was Sieh but I didn’t fit.” I was babbling, still trying not to cry. “And everybody knows there needs to be a Sieh, the planets and suns keep calling for him, it’s all wrong without him, but I’m not the one, see? I asked Papa Tempa and he said I should be myself and that the Three are happy with me but I know it’s not completely true. They have grief over him, and I’m not enough to make it go away. He was so special, and I’m…just…me.”

There weren’t any other words I knew that would explain it, not even in our language. So I just stood there, looking at the blurred ground and wishing I could go to the wall of torn stars and cry where nobody would see me.

But Ia got really quiet for a moment. I didn’t know why. He said, “You embody some aspect of mortality, then.”

“Maybe?” I could only shrug. “Doesn’t everybody?”

“Some of us predate mortality, Sibling. Our natures are those of existence itself—or things beyond existence.” Yeah, like nothing. Ia was probably one of the really old ones, from back when the Three first learned how to make children. Like Sieh had been.

“Very well,” Ia said, after a long time that felt longer. “You may remain.”

“Really?” I caught my breath and bounced a little, excited. “You mean it?”

“Provided,” he said, and he was all sharp and just a little mad again, “that you take the greatest of care never to cause harm to any mortal.”

“I won’t! I promise I’ll never hurt—”

He flicked his hand. “You cannot promise that. You don’t know yourself yet; you may be unable to help it. And there is danger in any interaction between gods and mortals, for both parties; this is not a safe realm, Sibling. But beyond that, I must insist that you try to avoid harm.”

I tried to stand really tall, which was how I knew mortals showed each other they really meant a thing, but it didn’t work because I was shaped like a little girl and he was twice as big. “I promise to try,” I said. “I’ll try hard! I don’t want to ever hurt mortals like I did before.”

“If you do,” said Ia, scary again, “you will answer for it, to more than just me. Do you understand?” After I nodded hard, Ia unfolded the world so that we finally stood firmly in the gray place.

The gray place was a thing mortals called a HOUSE, which is what they used to keep their flesh safe and dry and comfortable. Some mortals carried their houses around with them, or made new ones wherever they slept, but human-mortals made places that stayed. (Sometimes they moved around, though, and swapped houses between them.) This house was bigger than the ones around it, and it had lots of space inside and a wide flat thing on top. The wide flat thing was meant to keep rain outside, but someone had also put furniture and a frame and drapes on it, so maybe it was also for living, too. The frame and drapes made a shady place underneath, and in this shady place were two mortals, who looked at us in surprise. I was surprised, too, so I asked Ia without words where we were and why.

“We are in the house of Fahno dau she Miu tai wer Tellomi kanna Enulai,” Ia said aloud. “Someone you will need to know, if you mean to stay here.”

In the mortals’ language her name meant that Fahno was the daughter of Miu and of the clan Tellomi, and she was also part of some group of people called enulai. I didn’t know what a clan or an enulai was—maybe like niwwah and elontid and mnasat, which were the different kinds of godlings? Maybe a family, like all us gods? If so, I liked that she was a daughter. I was a daughter, too! Maybe we could be friends.

But I needed to be polite now to prove to Ia that I could be here and not do bad things. I took a deep breath and spoke really softly this time when I said, “Hello!”

The two mortals looked really confused. Ia made a sound that was annoyed. “Don’t whisper.”

“I don’t want to be bad again!”

“Just speak at the same volume they do.”

I whispered louder, because I was getting annoyed, too. “They haven’t said anything.”

“Then speak at the volume I am using,” he snapped, so I tried that and said hello again, very carefully.

One of the mortals was sitting in a big, wide chair, and she was big and wide, too. The other stood beside her, because he had been showing her something on a scroll before we appeared. He was tall and narrow. I thought maybe he was younger, too, but both of them were so much older than me that I couldn’t tell! I could tell that both of them wanted to laugh, though. I don’t know what was so funny.

“Hello,” said the wide one back. She showed her teeth; that was good! I grinned back. I was doing hello right! Then she looked at Ia and raised her eyebrows.

“Not mine,” Ia said, looking more annoyed, which I hadn’t thought was possible. “The Three have at last blessed the realms with another godling.”

“That is a wondrous thing,” the wide one said, looking very surprised and pleased. “And may I assume the task of raising her has been given to you? I did not think godlings did things like us mortals, but I have always thought you would father fine children, Ia.”

Ia pushed his glass things up. “Godlings raise themselves, Fahno-enulai. I’m simply providing…guidance. And attempting to minimize the damage.”

“That sounds like raising children, to me.” She tilted her head and looked at the narrow mortal. “Arolu? Men know more of these things.”

The narrow mortal, Arolu, had the laughing look, too, although he put a hand inside his sleeve and covered his mouth while he did it. “I would say no, Fahno. A child is both joy and pain, and I see only pain in Lord Ia’s face.”

“Yes, well.” Ia turned back to the wide woman. “An expert concurs.”

The wide woman shook her head. (Was she FahnodausheMiutaiwerTellomikannaEnulai, or was she Fahno-enulai? I had not known that mortals had lots of names the way gods did. How did they decide which to use when?) “Enough with your chattering, both of you. You’ve interrupted us, Lord Ia, but since I hadn’t felt like discussing the household accounts anyway, I don’t mind so much.” She waved, and the narrow man sighed and straightened, tucking the scroll into his arm. Then she focused on me, and I got scared again, because I had not realized mortals could feel like gods but this one really really did. She had a big, strong presence, and I was suddenly aware that she was trying to decide if I was worth her time. I straightened up, hoping she would think so.

“Please introduce your sibling, Lord Ia,” she said. “We must teach her good manners, after all.”

Ia pushed up his round eye-things. “That might be difficult, Fahno—the name, that is, and not the manners. She has no name as yet.”

“No name?” Fahnosomething frowned.

“We create those for ourselves, too, or choose a name from what others call us. Generally later, once we’re more certain of who we are—but that is why this sibling of mine has come, in fact. She seeks to learn her nature, and thinks she might find it here among your kind.”

“Fascinating.” To me, Fahnosomething said, “What do your parents call you, little one?”

I jumped. “They call me You, FahnoIDon’tKnowWhichOtherNamesToCallYou. I don’t mind if you call me that, too!” Even though the mortal word for you was so thin and flat. It contained nothing of my essence or experiences, nothing of what Fahnosomething thought of me. It was just a syllable.

Fahno twitched, which was a funny sort of thing for her to do. “You may call me Fahno-enulai. And—I’m sorry, but we’ll need something more than You to work with. Can you just choose a temporary name for now?”

I looked at Ia, frowning and trying to understand why this was so important. “Mortals cannot perceive one another’s souls,” he explained. “They need names, and sight and other things, to tell one another apart.”

“That is so sad!” I looked at Fahno and put a hand to my mouth, because that was one of the worst things I’d ever heard. “You poor things.”

“We get by,” said Fahno in a wry tone. “But names are one of the, ah, coping mechanisms we use.”

“Oh. OK, then.” I thought really hard for a minute. Well, I was in a mortal shell, so I would start with that word. “Shell? Ssss. Ssss…shhh. Sh.” I liked the roundness of the sh sound, and the languor of the ll. “Shrill?” No, but—“Shill?” It had…weight. And even meaning: in their language it was decoy. I was pretending to be mortal, wasn’t I? “Shill.” I looked at Ia, who ignored me. I looked at Fahno. “Shill? I like Shill.”

“Shill it is, then.” She looked me up and down. “Interesting.”

“Huh?”

“Well, you appear to be a healthy Darren girl of perhaps six or seven years old. Except for your eyes—oh!” I had just made my eyes brown instead of gold, like Fahno’s; she chuckled. “Ah, yes. Now you could pass for some niece or granddaughter of mine. Did you do that on purpose?”

I shrugged, because I hadn’t, except the eyes, which I had, and I didn’t know how to answer. “It’s what other mortals on this continent look like. Also, it just felt right.”

“Ah. And why did you choose that name?”

“I just picked things that sounded pretty and put them together.”

“Why those syllables, though?” I blinked, and Fahno sat forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “Even for gods, a name encapsulates some proportion of who you are. There’s a reason those syllables sounded pleasant to your ear. There’s a reason you combined them in that particular manner, and a reason the whole appealed to you. Perhaps you should think about that.”

I inhaled and stared at her. “You know a lot about gods!”

She chuckled. “Thank you for noticing. That was just observation, though. I’ve never met a godling child before.” She took a deep breath and turned to Ia again, her smile fading. “Which is why, old friend…I’m going to turn you down.”

Ia frowned. “You are the best of the enulai, Fahno. If anyone can manage a newborn godling—”

“I am also the oldest of the enulai, Ia. I’ve retired! All the godlings I once looked after have been assigned to others. I haven’t the energy to keep an eye on a mortal child, let alone one who can gallivant about the universe at will. I’m sorry, old friend, but I just can’t.”

Ia looked surprised and sad and sort of…scared? I didn’t know why. It was weird that somebody so scary could be scared too! I would ask him about it later. To Fahno I said, “What’s all that mean?”

I don’t think Ia heard me. Fahno had a weird sad look on her face while she looked at Ia, but she said to me, “We call it the Compact, little one. An agreement made some three hundred years ago, when mortalkind finally grew weary of being caught in the gods’ cross fire, and the Three left us to manage our own affairs. If you mean to do more than just visit this world now and again, if you would live among us, you must have a minder to see that you wreak a minimum of havoc. An enulai.” She touched her own breast. “But I cannot be your enulai; I am too old.” She paused for a moment, her gaze flicking back to Ia again. “I think my dear friend forgot that even we demons eventually grow old, and die.”

And that is when I screamed and ran away to another galaxy.

OK that was not my fault. Naha told me all about demons! She said they were full of POISON and they can make me die and they are as bad as NOTHINGNESS and MAELSTROM except they have killed way more gods and that is why I ran away!

But Ia came and got me and told me I was being stupid and rude and I should stop. He told me how enulai are, yes, demons who have agreed to keep an eye on godlings so they don’t do bad things, and how that is only fair because it is the mortals’ planet, after all, even if we have earned the right to be on it by fighting for it and dying on it and making children there. (Demon children!) And he said the demons will not kill me unless I do bad things to mortals, so don’t do bad things and everything will be fine.

I was still scared until Ia finally got mad and made himself scarier and so finally I went back to Fahno and said I was sorry. Ia is mean and I do not like him at all, and it’s not fair that he’s so strong because I don’t think he should be, I don’t care how old he is.

Anyway. Fahno accepted my apology and told me I could stay with her and her family while she tried to find another enulai for me. I was happy then because I would see what it was like to live like a mortal! And that is when I realized Fahno had said it to distract me so I wouldn’t be so scared anymore, but she meant it, too, so that is OK. It worked and I was happy again.

“You really are just a child,” she said after all this, shaking her head.

“Well, of course I am,” I said. Mortals were very strange.

After that Ia said he was tired of dealing with me and went away. Arolu took me to another part of the house and showed me a room that had things for me to use while I was staying there. One of them was called a BED and it was for lying on during sleep! But godlings do not sleep so I asked Arolu what I should do instead.

“I’m sure you can find some way to occupy yourself,” he said. “But do it quietly, please, because the mortals of the house will be sleeping.”

Then he told me about the house’s library, and I was really happy because I had heard of books! I sat down to teach myself to read and promised to be very quiet all night. I was, too, once Arolu left. OK, I got bored and made up a song to sing but I sang it in sounds mortals can’t hear. The song went Hey hey hey hello hello hello how are you I am fine I have a name it is Shill. But nobody heard me.

(I liked Arolu. He was big and his voice was always warm and he had lots and lots of long black hair, which reminded me a little of Naha. I asked him if anybody ever got lost in his hair, and he sort of blushed and said that was a question only a wife should ask. I didn’t know what that meant.)

Some time passed. It was not even a year, but it felt much longer. Time in the mortal realm is very strange! All the mortals went to bed and got very quiet, so I dissipated my body and went to go look at them. Mortal sleep is not very interesting to watch. They just lie there and fart and dream. One of the bedrooms in the house was empty, but there was a familiar smell all over it. I wasn’t sure what made it familiar, so I went back to wandering through the house.

And then I got annoyed. Everything was boring! The mortal realm was supposed to be fun! I decided I just wasn’t seeing enough of it, and jumped out the window to go exploring.

The city we were in was called ARREBAIA. It told me its name with the wind and the mortals’ thoughts. It was really old! Way older than me, but everything was older than me so that didn’t matter. It had big stone walls all over the place, holding dirt in terraces for the mortals’ gardens and streets and markets, and it was full of heavy old cubes and pyramids that the mortals lived in. It was a perfect city for playing in.

So I ran down a pyramid! I ran up a cube! I jumped into a penned-in place and there was an animal called an ALPACA! I petted it; it liked me. I ran down the street with my arms out, which made the mortals turn and stare, but I did not care because it was nighttime and I missed Naha. (I was really fast, anyway, so the mortals did not have to look at me for very long.) There was bright shiny moonlight on my skin and nice cool air and I think I ate a bug. It tasted awful! There were all sorts of things everywhere, and they were amazing! I loved them all.

But then! I heard something!

Something jumpy and beaty and steady and off-steady. I did not know what it was! It was way over on the other side of town, not too far from Fahno’s house, so I ran back as fast as I could (and maybe I folded spacetime a little, but just a little, so that is not cheating). The beaty sound was coming from the forest outside town, right where its edge stopped against the city’s outermost terrace-wall. I hopped over the wall and went into the trees, which was hard because the trees were big and tangly and wet and I was making so much noise that I worried I would scare the beaty sound. I turned into a lizard, and that made it easier. The smell of humans got thick, and then I saw a campfire through the trees, and the beaty sound was a feeling too now, all heavy and pounding down in my lizard-guts.

Then I got through the trees and gasped—because it was another city! A little bitty city, just a few buildings and they were little, just a few streets and they were made of dirt, just two terraces and they grew wild, not planted or lived on at all. But it was a real city, because it was fierce and angry and it said who are you so I said who I was and then I asked who it was. It had a little bitty name, too: YUKUR. Arrebaia means “the city of the conquerors,” but Yukur is just “the men’s place.” Still, I told the city that Yukur was a very pretty name, because I wanted to be nice.

Yukur sort of huffed and told me I was not supposed to be there because I was not really a boy, but it was maybe OK because I was shaped like a lizard, and anyway I was a godling so it could not stop me. I could tell that it did not like me being there, though, so I made my lizard body into a boy lizard body, and promised I would only wear a boy body, or no body at all, while I was in the city’s limits. Then it was happy, and I was glad, because I had done the hello thing right again.

I skittered down a wall and up some steps and then jumped into some bushes when people went by: two boys, all aflutter in their pretty robes and long hair, rushing up the steps like they were late for something. I could hear one of them whisper to the other, “It’s Eino tonight!” I didn’t know what that meant.

(I know you know, but I am telling the story! Shut up! Interrupting is rude.)

The other boy giggled and then they both were gone up the steps. I followed them but it was slow because I was only a little lizard. I decided to be human instead, but since I had said I would be a boy, I made a boy body. Every boy I had seen since coming to the mortal realm—except Ia, but he was weird—wore heavy drapey robes and long hair, so I made myself like that, too, and ran after the two I had seen. It is hard to run when you are covered from neck to toe in robes, though, and when your hair is four feet long, and also when you have stuff between your legs that dangles and flops around! I did not like any of it, but I had made a promise. Eventually I figured out that I had to hold my head really high and gather up my robes, and run in this weird very straight way or I would hurt the dangly bits—but if I did all this, I could run like those other boys.

And I wanted to run! There was another sound over the beats that had drawn me to Yukur: deep and rough and rhythmic mortal voices. I did not know what it was, but it made me bouncy; I wanted to make the sounds, too, and move with the beats. I could have just dissipated and gone to see as a godling, but this was a mortal thing, all body-stuff, pounding blood and tingly skin and heavy breath. I needed mortalness to know what it all meant.

Finally I got to the top of the terrace. And! I saw!

Fires and smoke! And lots of boys all gathered in a circle! Some of them were to the side of the group, hitting things made of wood and leather which is what made the beaty noise—drums; Itempas had told me all about them. The rest of the boys were trotting about for a better position in the circle, or already in the circle, moving all together and making sounds in time with the beats, some high and some low and all of it together beautiful. Exciting! So this was MUSIC!

It is not like the music in the gods’ realm, which is why I did not recognize it at first. Only two beats overlapping, no harmonies or clicks or static or interweaving thoughts, and the beats were not even as fast as pulsar-beats. The boys’ singing was not especially interesting, either, just words chanted over and over, a couple of tones harmonizing. It was catchy, though, and I liked it even if it was very simple. I moved forward a few feet behind the boys I had seen before, who were still whispering as they edged into the circle of other boys. Most of the boys around us were bigger, older, with heavy jaws and deep voices and big shoulders beneath their robes. They moved aside as us younger ones came through, though, grinning down at us in welcome, and I could not help smiling shyly back. One of the big boys patted me on the back. “It’s all right,” he said. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. Just do what feels right.”

“OK,” I said, not really knowing what else to say. It must have been right, because the big one pushed me forward, closer to the circle’s center, so I could see.

And then it was WOW I had never seen COOL I really liked WHEE there was stuff going SWISH and legs going KICK and IT WAS AMAZING.

What? Oh, fine, I will say it better.OK. The boys in the circle were fighting.

It did not look like fighting, not at first, because everything was swirling robes and looping rivers of hair. It looked like dancing, or what Papa Tempa had said dancing looked like. It was harder than dancing, though, faster, and the feel of it was not about the music. The boys rode the music, but they were focused on each other, and everything in them was all fierce! And wanting to win! One boy’s foot came out from a swirl of robe and swept the other’s ankle and that one fell back but caught himself to turn the fall into a flip. He swirled away, always swirling, everything a circle. Suddenly I understood: it was supposed to look like a dance, even if it was really a fight!

And I wanted to fight-dance, too, watching them! I did dance a little, because the drums were so nice, and because the boys’ song pulled me along like the Maelstrom when It is hungry. But I wanted to do the other dance, too!

Then somebody called out, and the drums stopped, and the boys at the center ended their swirls and faced each other. I could feel how much they wanted to keep fighting, but instead each one of them crossed a big wide sleeve over his face and dipped down on one leg for a minute, which said respect in the language without words. Then they went back into the circle, and all the boys around us cheered and stamped and the air got hot with joy!

But then everybody got quiet, shushing and elbowing each other, more excited for some reason. I turned to look where everyone else was looking, and gasped when they gasped as another boy stepped through the crowd. I don’t know why they gasped. I gasped because even though this boy was just a mortal like all the rest, he wasn’t wearing any of the robey things boys in Darr liked to wear. He had on loose pants, and the slipper-shoes boys wear, but above the pants he didn’t have on anything except brown skin! The boy had a lot of hair like all the others, too, but his was all clipped up on top of his head in big loopy knots. The starkness of him was like a slap in the eyeballs.

I also gasped because I recognized him! It was the boy from the market. His was the scent I had detected in the empty room of Fahno’s house; there had been echoes of Fahno in it because they were related somehow. And now I knew why he hadn’t been there, even though all the mortals in Fahno’s house were supposed to be asleep. He looked different from that day in the market in other ways: darker, somehow. More vibrant, more fierce, with more of his true self showing through the skin—like Naha when the wildness comes. When the boy stepped forward, holding up his arms to get everyone’s attention, all the other boys breathed together, ensnared. Of course they were! In that moment, I was, too. He felt like another god.

“Eino,” said one of the boys I’d followed. He said it the same way I said, the Three.

“Comes the midnight,” Eino said, turning with his arms still spread. “Comes the moondown. ’Tis the Nightlord’s time, all deepfine and cool and scary. ’Tis the time when boys—men—come out to play.”

Laughter rippled through the boys, and someone whooped on the other side of the circle; there were other shouts, stamping feet, raised fists trailing colored robe-sleeves. Eino laughed, too, throwing his head back so that the cords of his long neck stood out. I had never realized mortals could be like this. I had no idea why he was talking so funny, either, but it was perfect for the moment, for the moonlight, for the boys’ excitement. When he hissed and ran forward and leapt into the middle of the circle, landing in a crouch, everyone hissed, too, some of them crouching, too, moving to Eino’s rhythm the same way they’d moved to the drums before. “Time for the midnight dance!” cried one, and others took up the cry, punching the air and swirling and swaying even without music. When Eino drew himself up, though, straight and taut with one hand held out in invitation, everyone got quiet again.

“Go on,” whispered one boy nearby to another. But that one shook his head.

“It’s Eino!” That was another boy. I think it was supposed to make everyone excited, and it did. “Eino!”

“I don’t know.” “You can!” “You can do it!” “Look at how strong he is.” “He’s one of us.” “Do it and see!” So much wanting, from all the boys around me. So many whispers, so many hopes, so much fear. That was when I finally understood: everybody was excited because Eino was offering to dance with one of them. He just wanted a volunteer!

Well, that was easy.

“I’ll do it!” I jumped up and down, waving my hand. Everybody got quiet, then moved aside so there was nothing between me and Eino.

Eino tilted his head and lowered his hand. He was so still, all shining skin and muscle in the firelight. His eyes were very black, too. “Haven’t seen you before. Or have I?” His eyes narrowed, and even though I was wearing a different body, I got nervous. Maybe he could see my soul? Mortals weren’t supposed to be able to do that. He shook his head, finally, and I relaxed. “Shed those window-drapes the women have put on you, baby boy. Here in our place we dance like Nahadoth, shadows and chaos, feeling the dark with our skin.”

Eagerly I threw off the robes, which I didn’t like anyway, until I had on nothing but pants and slippers like him. He grinned when I tried to stand like him, mostly failing because he was much bigger and prettier, almost a man. I was shaped like a boy, but still just a little one. “Nice. You’re feeling it.” He jerked his head toward my head, though, and I remembered the long hair. Hastily I tied it in a big knot at the back of my head, and he nodded approval. “Let’s dance, then.”

He came at me, no pause and no preparation—not straight on, though. It was the circling of before, the swirling dance, in and out and revolving. Since he wasn’t wearing robes or hair I could see it better now. I stood for a minute, getting the feel of it, then clumsily tried to move like he did; everyone laughed, at first.

But then—oh. Ohhhh. The chanting started again. The foot-stomping shook the fires, making the light jump, sound and sight in rhythm, cacophony given meaning, and that made it just the tiniest bit like the gods’ realm. Then it became easy to mimic the way Eino sort of jog-jumped into the circle and back, and to use the momentum the way he did, turning and turning, arms out, legs flying. At once I could feel the way moving in circles made the center of me almost unshakable. I could dart in unpredictable directions even while seeming to follow a pattern! Eino was circling on his side of the circle, waiting for me to get the hang of it, but that was no fun! I darted toward him and back. Come at me! Eino puffed out an approving sort of laugh, and then the dance really got started.

Oh, it was perfect. No drums this time, but none were needed; the boys’ voices were heavy and deep, their movements in unison like a guide. I went to the ground when Eino did, planting my hands in the dust and kicking out with my legs, laughing and breathless when he dodged me effortlessly with a backflip, delighted even when he leapt back and slammed me to the ground. It hurt, but what was pain? The dance became everything. The dance was worship, and strength, and better magic than anything I’d ever known in my short life. “I am!” I cried, and maybe it was boy-language and maybe it was god-language but it did not matter because it had the same meaning either way! Eino felt it, too, and he answered me in kind with sweat and ferocity and magic. Now when he threw a fist at me the movement said FORCE and it hit me really hard! If I had been mortal I would’ve gone flying; several of the boys in the ring behind me cried out and fell. But I laughed and said back WIND, silly! And I spun the force away in a gust that made everybody’s pretty long hair whip around. Then Eino stomped the ground and I felt the verb of his muscles shout SHATTER, and the ground cracked in a line of rubble from his feet toward mine. (His eyes got really big, but the dance had him; he had no time to react, beyond this.) So I jumped up high, like ten feet into the air, and I said WHEE without words and he stopped staring at the ground and stared at me instead. The dance! He started to grin. Then he jumped, too, not as high but just right, and we both landed in a spin. We spun and spun, our circle getting wider as the other boys backed away, the earth shaking harder, the chanting growing louder and harsher and faster until—

Everything stopped.

I was mid-leap when the world suddenly narrowed to a fine point, and my whole self shifted and flexed and rang like a bell.

I understood. I understood something new!

“Power,” I said softly. I uncurled myself from the leap and stuck to the air in surprise. “That must be part of it!”

“Yes,” said Nahadoth, who curled out of the shadows of the crowd.

I turned happily. “Naha!” She materialized in grace and silence out of the crowd, the swirls of her substance licking and flickering round every boy nearby. Their abandon fed her and she fed them in turn, for this was her time and they had invoked her spirit. The fire went out as she passed, the logs pop-hissing as they frosted over—but the moonlight above, and that from her face, was more than enough to see by.

“Look how you’ve grown,” she said. “Multiple shapes, new perspectives, new languages…Shill.”

I beamed, putting my hands on my hips. “Yes, Naha! Hello, hello! I made that name up myself. Do you like it?”

“It is beautiful.” I could not be sure if she was talking about me, though, because she had stopped to stare at Eino, frozen as he was in mid-lunge. For a moment a look that was avid, almost greedy, came over Nahadoth’s face, and I started to get worried. Eino had spoken Naha’s name in the dark. Even I knew that was never safe.

Maybe I could make her think about something else. “Naha, I think I found a little bit of my nature! It’s power!”

“Yes.” She was reaching out to touch Eino’s face. I got really nervous, because I liked Eino—but she just drew a finger over his lips, so I relaxed. “Not your power, though.”

“I—” Oh. “Huh?”

“Can you not see?” Naha was behind Eino now, staring intently at his back like she wanted to hollow him out and live in his skin. “Look, Shill. We made your eyes from the stuff of the Maelstrom Itself. See everything.”

So I looked again, really hard, and then I looked some more, and then I got bored and started thinking about whether power had anything to do with being a trickster like I wanted, I mean what if I ended up being something weird like the godling of lizards or something, I didn’t want to be weird, and then all of a sudden I saw all the realms and all the paths and all the lines of meaning that mortals could not.

“Oh!” I dropped to the ground and trotted over to one of the boys standing frozen around us. There it was: a little bloorp of intention, of devotion, running from him to Eino. “And oh!” I ran over to another boy; another bloorp, like a thread made of bubbles, or maybe heat haze. A tie. A web. They were all of them, every boy at that camp, fixed on Eino. Every one of them had given him something of themselves, making him stronger; every one of them would die for him. Because of the dance? I did not know. But even I had a little, thin link to him. Mine, however, glowed gold-white, and it ran in both directions. I was making him stronger, but he was making me stronger at the same time. I didn’t know what that meant.

“We make them in our image,” Nahadoth breathed, “and they replicate us endlessly in their own.”

I didn’t understand at all, but that was pretty normal when talking to Naha. I just shrugged.

When Naha stepped out from behind Eino, I finally noticed how the little city Yukur was shivering, the very bricks of it radiating awe and fear at her presence. It did not protest her being there, though the shape she wore was female now, because she was even less a she than I was the he I seemed to be. It would not have mattered much if Yukur had protested, though; Nahadoth was Nahadoth. Rules meant nothing to the god of chaos and change.

I trotted over to stand before her; at once the tendrils of her swept round me, possessive. “I know you didn’t want me to come here, Naha,” I said, earnestly. “I…I hope you’re not mad.”

She looked amused, cupping my face in her hands. “I have no interest in obedient children.” Then the light of her face dimmed, and for some reason she looked away, southward. There was nothing south except that other continent of the planet; what was she thinking about, looking that way? “But beware, Shill. Never underestimate mortals—especially not where power is involved. Not even when they have power of their own already.” She looked at Eino again, and this time the look was cold. “They always crave more.”

I nodded solemnly, even though I did not understand this, either. I was more now, smarter maybe, but some things were not about smarts.

Naha left off glaring at Eino to look up at the moon which echoed her face, quick-switch as always. “‘Comes the moondown,’” she said, thoughtful. It could have meant lots of things. “You should warn them, by the way.”

And then, because that was how Naha said good-bye, she faded away.

A moment later time snapped back into place. The chanting boys resumed and then faltered, startled; the leaping blur that was Eino landed and stumbled; the boys nearest the fire gasped and jerked in surprise when they found it suddenly extinguished and icy-cold.

And suddenly Eino stared at me, recognizing me at last through the boy-flesh and the dance-haze. “You.”

Whoops. “Oh. Um. Hello.” Everyone stared at me; for the first time, this was really uncomfortable. To distract them, I added, “I’m, um, supposed to warn you about something.”

Everything was quiet for long enough to make me squirm. Then Eino suddenly flinched and inhaled and looked away, toward the entrance to Yukur. His eyes widened. “Oh, slippy-dicked hells.”

Everyone looked where he was looking. There was nothing to see—but I didn’t need eyes to see, and clearly Eino didn’t, either. Along the half-hidden road that led to Yukur came a bunch of women, all skintight and teeth-bared and cruel-cold. I could not hear their thoughts because they weren’t thinking very loud, but I could taste their intent anyway, because that was not a thought but a feeling: anticipation. Hunting-lust, and maybe other kinds, too. For…for…I inhaled. They were coming for all the boys here!

Right in that moment, one of the boys near the edge of the terrace saw the women’s torches through the trees. We all heard his broken-voiced shout, though I couldn’t make out the words, and suddenly boys in that direction cried out and began to scatter—some down another set of steps toward the trees on Yukur’s other side, some toward us and away from the women, some down the main terrace steps and right toward them.

“No!” Eino’s voice had the deepness of a near man; most of them heard him. “No, don’t run! We have to stand together—face them—demonshit!”

No one was listening. I had no idea what was happening, but I thought maybe people should listen to Eino. HEY! I said with god-talk into all the boy-heads around. Not all of them heard me even then; some of them were too afraid. But most of the boys stopped or stumbled, and turned back to stare at Eino as if he’d been the one to yell at them.

Eino threw me a quick glance; I didn’t know if he was mad or what. But he waved his arms at the boys. “Here! To me!” He turned to the boys nearby, herding them toward the rear of the dance-terrace where the firelight did not reach and the shadows of the surrounding forest were flickery and subtle. Oh! I saw what he meant to do! I grinned and trotted along with him, as more of the boys who had heard me ran to join him, huddling together and whispering in harsh, fearful voices.

“Hush!” Eino’s hiss stilled them. He stepped in front of them, facing the stairs and spreading his arms as if to cloak the boys behind him, though there were at least twenty of them and he did not have hair that moved like Naha’s. And yet—hee! After a moment the shadows around us stretched, weaving together and becoming less dappled, more solid, more obscure…until when the first woman came up the steps, dragging a panting boy with her, she saw nothing. We were invisible to mortal eyes.

More women came up, some of them also hauling boys who struggled or stumbled along with heads bowed or faces tear-streaked. But as the first woman looked around and didn’t see us even though we were standing right there, her brows drew together in a scowl. “This is it?”

Another woman crouched by the boys’ fire, which had thawed out and looked as though it hadn’t been lit in ages. Clever Naha! “Looks like. Unless the others fled into the forest?”

“Bunch of untrimmed boys in the forest, at night, in a tither? We’ll never see them again,” muttered another woman.

“Demonshit. I don’t want to hear it in Council if one of them gets eaten by a jaguar. Spread out beyond the city, try to pick up trails.” The first woman glared at the cold fire. Then she yanked around the boy she held, to face her. “I heard more voices than just you few. Where’d the rest go?”

“I…I do not know, medre.”

She did something to his arm that I couldn’t see because of all his robes. He made a sound that was tight and terrible. She was hurting him! I almost gasped, but that would have given away Eino’s group—and already Eino was dripping sweat, his face tight with concentration and his arms trembling with effort. I did not know why. It was not a hard thing he was doing.

“I don’t know!” The boy did not show his pain much, but even the little that tightened his jaw and thinned his lips was terrible. “I didn’t see!”

“Stop that,” said the woman by the fire, glowering. “You want to explain away bruises to his mother or sisters?”

The first woman rolled her eyes, but stopped doing whatever she was doing; I relaxed as the boy did. Then she grinned. “Well, there’s other ways to find out what you’ve been up to. Right, pretty?” She stepped closer and put a hand down between them, feeling for something amid his robes; he gasped and jerked away, but she pulled him back. “No telling what you boys do when you’re alone, trying to play woman for each other. Maybe I should check to see if you’re still intact? Maybe I should make you less intact, take you to my house instead of yours.” She fumbled with his robes, trying to pull them up. He went rigid, his eyes full of tears. I did not like it at all and I wanted to do bad things to her! But if I did, it would give away Eino’s group.

“Brightness and shadows, Veiba.” The woman by the fire, who felt like a leader, came over and dragged the boy away from her; Veiba laughed, as the boy turned his face away and trembled. “We don’t have time for that sort of foolishness.”

With that, the leader turned and whistled in two tones. From steps and terraces and the nearby woods around Yukur—Yukur was really mad! All those womenfeet on its stones!—other whistles answered her in different tones, different tunes. The woman sighed. “No trails out of the site but those of the few we’ve caught. We lost them.”

“These few are enough,” said Veiba. “It’s proof they’ve been sneaking out, coming here.”

The other women murmured agreement; finally the leader sighed. Raising her voice, she called, “Hear the decree of the Warriors’ Council! By their word is this place of traitors forbidden now and henceforth. Come again and we will catch you, and name you traitors, too. Come forth now for amnesty; we will see you escorted home.” She glanced at Veiba in plain warning. “Safely.”

She paused for a moment, listening. That’s when I heard Eino panting really hard! He was going to give us away! I didn’t understand why, but he was almost out of magic. That was weird, so I touched his back and gave him some more. He jumped and looked at me in a surprised way, but it was enough. He stopped panting, and when the moment of silence passed, the leader shook her head and held up her fist in a signal. All the women turned and started heading back down the steps, bringing the boys they’d caught with them. But those were only a few of the boys who’d been in the dance-circle! We were the best at hide-and-seek.

When the strange women were finally gone, Eino let the magic go and sagged to the ground on his hands and knees. The other boys hugged each other and some of them cried a little and the rest went down next to Eino, praying or rubbing his back or whispering quiet, Thank the gods. (I poked my lip out at this. They should be thanking the godling! Stupid mortals.)

“Hey,” I said, hunkering down next to Eino to peer at him once some of the other boys had withdrawn. “You want some more magic? I have lots.”

He looked up at me with the strangest look on his face. “Wh-why?”

“Huh?”

“Why? Why are you here? Why did you help us?”

I blinked, but I didn’t know how to answer the questions, so I just kind of shrugged. “I’m really sorry,” I said, partly also to Yukur. Yukur just sent a wave of snittiness back; it would be mad for a century about this. I sighed. “I didn’t mean to interrupt the thing you and the others were doing.”

Eino’s jaw tightened. He sat back on his knees abruptly. “You at least joined in and didn’t break the spirit of it. That lot, though”—he nodded after the strange women—“were probably retaliation for that little trick I pulled on the Council this afternoon. We’ve danced out here before, many times, and no one ever troubled us.” He shook his head, sobering. “Gods. An actual raid. I must have really pissed them off.”

“What do you mean?” I hunkered forward; he was speaking softly, like he didn’t want the other boys to know, so I did it, too. “What was in that paper thing you made me take into the Raringa?”

“An idea they clearly didn’t want to consider. I’ll tell you later.” He looked around at the other boys, who had withdrawn into knots and were talking quietly to each other now. “Can you send them home? The hunters will be watching the trails, after that.”

“Huh? Oh! Yeah!”

“A moment, then.” Eino got to his feet, taking a deep breath and turning to the other boys. “You weren’t here, friends. If the ones they caught say that you were, you’ll be home safe in your beds in a moment to belie them. There’s no proof; remember that.”

Some of the boys let out relieved sighs. But another one who was tall and older like Eino frowned. “Eino, I can’t do this anymore. If I’d been caught…my mother’s carting business depends on me marrying into Selu-medre’s clan. The scandal—”

“Scandal!” A younger boy made an angry gesture. “You weren’t out here cavorting with foreign women or siring daughters for free, for gods’ sake—”

“Enough.” Eino looked weary and angry and some other stuff besides. “There’ll be time for recriminations later. If you don’t want to come next time, then don’t come. It’ll be some time before I do this again, anyway, to let things cool down.” His expression turned bitter. “I never dreamt they would find something so simple so threatening.”

The older boy frowned, but before he could ask, Eino glanced at me. I looked at the other boys and felt the places in the world where they were supposed to be, the place each called home, and I made little folds to put each of them in those places. (Some of them were surprised! I giggled at them.) After a moment, only me and Eino remained at the top of the terrace. He stared out over Yukur, the edges of his thoughts tasting thick and bitter. “There,” I said. “You want to go now, too? I have to go back to Fahno-enulai’s anyway; I’m staying with her ’til she finds me an enulai.”

He drew back a little at this, then sighed. “Of course you are. But I don’t want to go back yet.” His jaw tightened. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

He made an odd gesture with his hand, and I felt it: a tiny wave of the FORCE he had thrown during the dance. “I’ve never been able to do that before.”

I shrugged. “I dunno why you didn’t, but you could. Isn’t that what the dance was for?”

He turned his head a little, so I saw how he frowned. “It was just a dance. I found descriptions of it in a book, images of it in an old sphere. Nothing I learned of it said it was supposed to be magical.”

“Well, it was.” I shrugged. “The moves were not magic by themselves, but you made them magic because you told them to be, and the universe listened. Together you and the dance said stuff like sha ejuviat, and wahek akekkipu.”

Eino twitched. “You’re speaking godwords.”

“Um, yeah! ’Cause I’m a god?” I tried not to roll my eyes. Papa Tempa told me that mortals don’t believe things even when they see them, sometimes, so you had to say stuff that was obvious. Silly mortals. “Oh. Do you need me to tell you what I said in mortal?” I tried to think of how to translate, but mortal words are all wrong for stuff like that.

“No,” he said, slowly, frowning to himself. “I…understood what you said.”

Oh, well then. “So, you were speaking godwords yourself in the dance—just, you know, without godwords. Probably because you’re a demon, too, if you’re related to Fahno-enulai? I dunno. But that’s why the dance was full of magic. You were dancing with a god, and everything we do is magic, and you’re more magic than most mortals, so you danced it, too.” It had been so much fun! I did a little hop, remembering the dance, and stomped the ground once—but only a little, because Yukur didn’t need anybody else messing it up.

He turned to face me, looking troubled. “I know some magic,” he said, slowly. “My grandmother taught me enough to control myself, and to protect myself. But that takes concentration, practice. I’ve never done magic by accident.”

I stopped play-dancing, puzzled. “You didn’t do it by accident. You wanted to hit me, even though we were only play-hitting. You wanted the ground to shatter beneath your feet.”

“That’s it? I want something enough, and it happens?”

“Well, that’s how it works when I do it. But I don’t need the dancing. And I never saw anybody run out of magic before! Maybe because you’re mortal?”

He stared at me without answering for so long that I got bored and started spinning around, humming the boys’ chant.

“I need to know if you’re going to tell my family about this,” he said finally. “Since you’re staying with us.”

I stopped humming, although I kept spinning, because it was fun. “Tell them about what?”

Having become more sophisticated, now I could tell better when mortals were wary or surprised or disbelieving, and he was all three. “About this. Some of the boys they caught will talk.” His jaw flexed. “They’ll have to. Some of them will say that this was my gathering. But like I told the others, without corroboration, it will just be rumor. Rumors can’t—” He paused, then laughed in an angry sort of way. “Well, they can hurt me. But not as much as proof, and they won’t have that.”

“Oh.” I shrugged. “I won’t tell if you don’t want me to. But why aren’t you supposed to be here, if that’s the problem? And why were those women so mean?” I stopped spinning and scowled after them, and wished that bad things would happen to Veiba. My first curse! I didn’t know if it would work, but I sure hoped it would.

Eino shook his head. “They were cruel because that’s what people are, sometimes. And we weren’t supposed to be here because good clan-sons don’t do such things. We stay home where it’s safe. We obey without question. We don’t go out late at night unchaperoned to cavort like barbarians. And we don’t demand, via unsigned proposals slipped unseen into the Council’s ‘new business’ docket, that men be granted again the rights that we justifiably lost centuries ago!”

I was really confused. “Huh?”

Eino sighed and looked around, finding his discarded robes and shaking them out. Some of the other boys had trampled them; he grimaced and brushed ineffectually at the footprints until I willed them all away. He let out a little wry chuckle, then nodded thanks and began to put on the robes in layers: first a long narrow sleeveless sheath of the same stuff as his loose pants, then a simple black robe, then the voluminous, brightly-dyed outer robe, which had strange seams and extra lengths of cloth and weird unnecessary leather belts. It was very complicated. I grimaced over at my own discarded robes, disliking them just because of watching him.

“We come to Yukur,” he said, as he got dressed, “because once, a long time ago, a rebellion started here.”

I knew what a rebellion was! A long long time ago, like a whole three hundred years, a godling called Kahl Avenger had tried to do bad things. Everybody was still upset about it. “And everybody is still upset about it.” I was trying to sound wise.

“No, it was ages ago; everyone who lived through that time is long dead. And the rebels were fools.” Eino scowled, stepping into his slippers. “They hoped that a few weapons and help from Tokken and Menchey—nations that were our enemies back then—would allow them to overthrow the government and establish a different rule. Male rule, in the foreign fashion of things. But the Darre were warriors then, much more than now, and the rebellion was put down. Harshly.”

Well, that wasn’t a very good story! “What happened to them?”

“Tried as traitors and executed or exiled. And then, even though men had helped to fight back against the rebels, even though a man was ennu, the nation’s leader, at the time…the women took away any rights the men possessed.” Eino shook his head, flicking at wrinkles and making minute adjustments to his robes. “To vote, to hold property, to occupy any positions of worth, even to be counted adults in their own right. It was a reaction against everything seen as a contribution to the rebellion: the weak ennu, a war that had decimated the country a few decades before, foreign influences. But that’s why now, a bunch of boys gathering to have fun brings down fifty hells’ worth of wrath.” He sighed and shook his head. “Or maybe that was me. That scroll I had you deliver—it was a proposal to grant men inheritance rights. It probably had no chance of passing, but I just wanted them to consider it, for gods’ sake. Instead, it just seems to have made them angry. Hells.” He began to take the combs out of his hair, letting it fall back into its usual black river.

I felt really sad and flat then, all the fun of the dance gone. “Why do you do things like this, then? Dance when you’re not supposed to, ask for things that make people mad? Wouldn’t it be easier to just…” I shrugged. I didn’t really know how to say it.

He let out a sharp sort of laugh that didn’t sound like he actually thought anything was funny. “You really are new to this realm, aren’t you? You don’t know mortals very well.”

I nodded, glad to finally have the conversation return to something I understood. “I’m new to everything. You are the first mortal I ever met.”

“The first—” Eino frowned. “You do seem…inexperienced. And, well, young. But one can never tell with godlings; forgive me if you’re actually a billion years old.”

I had to count on my fingers, and multiply by the spins of this galaxy’s wheel, and then by the expansion of the universe, and some other things. Time is annoying. “I’m almost a thousand hours old!”

“A thousand—” He got an odd look on his face. “Hours?”

Oh, wait, he had used years. But I needed the next thing smaller than a year. “Um, a month?”

He stared at me. “You’re one month old?”

“And, like, ten days.” It wasn’t like I was still a baby.

After a long, silent stretch he burst out laughing, and it was almost a mean laugh but not quite. “Gods, this is my luck! But I suppose I should thank you—er.”

“Shill! My name is Shill!”

He inclined his head in a formal sort of way. “Eino mau Tehno tai wer Tellomi, Shill-medre.” Son of Tehno, of the same clan as Fahno, and he’d given my name a suffix that just meant he wanted to be polite to a strange woman. I beamed, delighted, especially since I was still wearing a boy body. “Lady Shill, rather. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to keep the others hidden, without you.”

“You’re welcome! I would have done it for you, though, if you’d asked, so then you wouldn’t be so tired. That would be my thank-you for the dancing. Or fighting.” I frowned, confused.

Eino smiled. “Both. In the days before the traitors, that was how men fought to hide their strength from—and display their beauty to—women. It was called anatun, the battle-dance.”

“I like anatun! I became more of myself while dancing with you.” Eagerly I grabbed one of the dangly parts of his sleeve; this, finally, was what I needed to talk to him about. “Will you help me?”

His expression grew wary. “Help you do what?”

“I don’t know what I am.” I bit my lip. Mortals had different ways of saying it. How had Ia explained it to Fahno? “I don’t know my…nature. But lots of godlings, they come to this realm and meet mortals who help them figure themselves out. I think you can be that person for me!”

Eino flinched and glared at my hands until I let go of his robes. “No,” he said, in a cold scary way that made me think of Mama Yeine. “You destroyed the city by accident, Lady Shill. You think I don’t remember, just because Lord Ia cleaned up your mess? I’m grateful for your help, but go find your nature with someone else as your prop. I have my own troubles.”

“But it only happened with you! And I only found a little bit of me!” He set his jaw and turned away, starting toward and down the terrace steps; anxiously I trotted after him, trying desperately to think of how I could convince him. “Maybe—um—maybe I can help you?”

Eino stopped. Fully robed, with his hair perfect, he was so different from the wild master of the dance that he seemed like a whole other person. I didn’t know which was the real him, and which wasn’t. Maybe he was both. In this shape, however, his expression didn’t change; his whole face was like a mask. “What do you mean?”

“I…I don’t know.” I twisted some grass beneath my toe; it didn’t mind. “I could do more god-stuff for you, I guess?” He had so little magic. “Anything you want, if I know how to do it.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’d do my bidding? In exchange for…what, exactly?”

Oh, this! I inhaled. “Let me follow you around and do stuff like you do and talk to you and watch how you do things and maybe be your friend!”

Eino’s expression turned sardonic. “Just that.”

“Well…yes. I need to understand you.” This, I felt sure, was the key to learning my nature. And then I gasped. “Oh! Maybe you could be my enulai, too!”

Something changed minutely in his expression. “No.”

“Why not? You’re a d-demon, aren’t you?” I still shivered when I said it.

“Yes, I am.” He smiled, but it was another not-happy smile. “I am the only child or grandchild of Fahno, greatest enulai of the age, who’s inherited her gift. But I’m told I don’t have the temperament to be an enulai.”

I remembered Eino yelling at me in the market when I’d stood there blubbering. “Uh, I don’t think whoever told you that was right.”

He blinked, then for the first time since the raid, he smiled in a good way.

After a moment he sighed. “Very well, then, Lady Shill.” He extended his hand; not quite sure what else to do, I took it. “I suppose you’ve been helping me all along, lately. We might as well formalize the relationship. Only until Beba assigns you a proper enulai, though. And only if you tell no one; I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

I gasped in delight. An enulai! A secret enulai, all mine! “OK!”

“In the meantime—” He tilted his head with perfect grace. “Home, please?”

“OK!” I was so happy that I took his hand and did exactly what he wanted, right then and there.

OK OK OK OK WAAAAAIT. (This is how Mama Yeine likes to tell stories. I don’t tell Papa Tempa that I like her storying, too, even if it is not the Proper Way.)

Now I will tell you about other stuff that was happening, because mortal stuff is very tiny stuff compared to everything else that’s always going on. And this other stuff is important! You need to know it, too, because you are really new, like me.

THERE IS A BIG HOLE IN EXISTENCE. Can you see it? Mortals can’t, but you can. Look right there. Look look look! Now tilt your head and squint. And now laheelishrinjael jyama, shu enwa owamehikach. Ashkayeerikajishge ichttu. Ichttu, ichttu! No, your other left. See it now?

Yes, it is really big. That is where the Maelstrom punched through. The Three have patched over the hole, and it is healing; Naha says it should be fine in a couple billion years. But right now it is still a big hole and actually you should not ever go too close to that hole because there are still bits of Maelstrom stuck in it and they will eat you. That is why I told you about it. I’m a good big sister!

Now look here and here and here and here, and there. Those are smaller holes. They will not hurt you. They’re hard to see, even, right? But they hurt existence. Those are the holes that are left behind when godlings die. We are not very important, not like the Three. The universe does not come apart if we die. It does get kind of messed up, though. Especially when one of the very old ones dies, because they’ve been around long enough that existence has sort of grown around them, and leaned on them a little. Without them, it cracks and maybe stumbles. Then in a few eons it’s fine again.

Everything was already stumbly when the Maelstrom came. The Demons’ War killed demons, and they do not leave holes the way godlings do, but maybe they left little itchy bumps because then later everybody got cranky and had the Gods’ War. That one was really bad, because lots of godlings died in it—mostly young ones, but a few old ones, too. And maybe that is why it was so easy for Kahl to call the Maelstrom, and why Sieh changed and died—because when existence is shaky, all kinds of things can happen, good and bad.

(Like me! OK, that is not really why I happened. I happened because my parents had sex.)

Anyway so when Sieh died and the hole was there, everything in the universe got…drifty. Galaxies spun loose, with stars flying everywhichway. Wandering planets barged into solar systems without even asking! Even the dark matter has been getting snitty; it keeps shrinking down and trying to make pocket universes. The Three have to keep telling it to settle down.

Some of that was because of the big hole. But some of it was because Sieh was gone. All the planets and moons used to like Sieh. The suns didn’t like him as much because he stole planets sometimes, but they listened to him, and did what he asked. Every other god, they give attitude.

That is what a trickster does, see. Shifts things around, stirs things up, makes the strong weak and the weak strong, makes people mad in good times so they won’t get madder in bad ones.

Tricksters are important, see. They are not always funny, not always cruel, not always childish; there are many kinds of tricksters, and Sieh was not the only one. But he was the Trickster, the one who keeps existence on its toes, and without him, things keep going, but they don’t go well.

Tricksters are really, really important.OK so there.

WHEEEEEEE WHEEEEEEEE WHEEEEEEwhat? But that part was fun! I wanted to tell you about it so you would know how fun!

Oh, fine. I will skip the stuff that is not important, but I think you are being a storybully, and you should maybe just relax.OK. So Eino slept really really late the next day and I got bored with watching him, so I went to a couple of other planets nearby and found a big gassy one that had really fast winds that were fun to skate on. There were little dancing creatures in the wind so I danced with them, and deeper inside the planet there were big boxes floating that had lots of long-dead mortals inside but you are BORING and don’t want to know about that so I will skip ahead.

After I came back Eino was still asleep so I sat down outside his room because I thought there might be more interesting things to look at in the hallway, and that is how I found out I was not supposed to be near his room. When people in the house began to stir, a boy I did not know saw me sitting in front of Eino’s door. He gasped really loud and ran off. (I was pretty sure that was not my fault.) Then Arolu came and found me and asked me to come with him.

We sat down in the house’s kitchen, where all the mortal food kept distracting me because it smelled so interesting, so finally Arolu asked another boy to get me a plate of food, and while I tried to figure out how to eat it, he talked. “I see you’ve met my son, Eino.”

“Oh! He’s your son?” I watched the other boy, who sat at the far end of the long table from me and Arolu. He used a small knife and a fork to shovel food into his mouth, so I tried to imitate him. Also I wondered why nobody had introduced me to him or to the boy who’d tattled on me. Maybe they were waiting for me to say hi first? “You and he aren’t much alike, though. He’s not very nice.”

Arolu chuckled. “Boys that age do tend to be…high-strung.” He spread his hands, as if in apology. “But along those lines…Lady Shill, it’s important that you not be seen alone with him. Especially not in intimate places, like his bedchamber.”

Bedchambers were intimate? “Why?” A piece of fruit slid off the knife; I giggled.

“Because you are female, Lady Shill, and he is male, and because you look older today than you did yesterday. I would have put you at seven then; now you look, hmm, ten.”

I looked down at myself, pleased to find that I had, indeed, gotten bigger. Being in the mortal realm was making me so much better! But—“Why does it matter that I look older now?”

“Because it is a reminder to everyone who meets you that your childlike appearance does not necessarily make you a child.”

“But I am a child!”

“For now.” Arolu reached over to a pot of liquid and poured some into a little cup, which he then offered to me. I sipped it and then kicked my feet because it was amazing! Sweet and sort of bitey, which made me grin at him. He smiled back. “Ginger juice, with a bit of serry-flower pulp. A Darren specialty; I’m told we sell quite a lot of it in northern Senm.”

“It’s good! Thank you!” He really was nice. I hoped Eino grew up to be more like him.

He inclined his head with perfect grace. “What I mean, Lady Shill, is that not only could you choose to look like an adult if you wanted, but you are maturing in fact, rapidly, as your appearance suggests. That is a dangerous thing.”

I stopped in the middle of sipping my juice, frowning. “I’m going to try really hard not to hurt anybody.”

His smile was suddenly sad. “I’m glad to hear that. But the fact remains you might hurt someone, for all your best intentions. Eino is impressionable, and even a young godling can be…impressive.”

I put my juice down, completely mystified. “Eino’s really strong, though. He’s even stronger than me in a lot of ways.” I felt this instinctively. “That’s why I want to stay near him, so I can get strong like that.”

“Yes.” Arolu stopped smiling. “You could use him that way. But what does he gain from the exchange? Will he grow stronger too?” When I inhaled, because I had never thought of it as using, Arolu sighed. “Study the history of gods and mortals on this world, Lady Shill. I suspect I cannot keep you from Eino; I’ve lived among enulai too long not to understand something of your kind and your natures. You must be what you are—but please, try not to make the same mistakes as others of your kind. That’s all I ask.”

With that, he patted my hand and got up and went away upstairs. I sat there a little while longer, trying to understand what that whole conversation had been about, but I didn’t. Then one of the boys came over and said, “May I take your plate, Lady?”

I blinked up at him. He was small, almost as small as me, and his hair was only to his shoulders; he’d braided it back. He didn’t have on a complicated robey thing the way Eino and Arolu did; his was simpler and plainer-colored, with narrow sleeves that had been pushed up to the elbow. He kept his eyes turned down, which I didn’t like, so I said, “Hello! I’m Shill. Who are you?”

He looked surprised. “Oh—um. I’m Juem, Lady. Just a servant.”

I knew the word servant. It was sort of like the way some mortals tried to do things we wanted, except we never asked them to. I wondered why. And I really wished he would look up! “Hey, do you want some juice?” I picked up the pot Arolu had used. There wasn’t much left so I made more until the pot was full, and then I made some cups, and then I stood up to try and pour the juice into them the way Arolu had done. The other boy was over by the fire, looking at me oddly; Juem just stared, gape-mouthed. I don’t know why. It was hard pouring the juice. I spilled some, then gasped and tried to find something to wipe it up with, and Juem reached for a rag on another table, and but then I just vanished it away and tried to pretend I hadn’t spilled it. Juem started laughing behind his hand, and I ducked my head. “Um. Sorry.”

The other boy—the one who’d told Arolu about me being outside Eino’s room—came over and took the pot from my hands with a graceful little bow. “It’s all right, Lady. That’s our job, anyway. It takes practice.”

“It’s a hard job!” They both giggled at this, but I felt better, because I didn’t think they were laughing at me. “Um, hello. I’m Shill.”

The other boy looked amused. He was older than Juem, but looked a lot like him, and I could feel the kinship between them. Siblings! “I heard. I’m Erem. Honored to meet you, Lady.”

“OK.” I wasn’t sure what else to say when people said stuff like that. “Do you want some too?” So we all sat down and had juice together.

“This is good,” Juem said as we relaxed. “We should do a fermented version of this for the wedding feast.”

“What?” Erem looked shocked.

“What?” I asked, confused.

Juem chuckled at Erem. “The old lady announced it yesterday; didn’t you hear? She’s picked Mikna. ’S’why Eino stormed out all afire before mid-meal. She said who she’d picked, he asked her for a private talk in her study, all prim and calm as you please—and then Heshna at the Dallaq clan house said he could hear Eino yelling. That’s two houses away.” He grinned at both of us; I blinked. “They say he didn’t even come home ’til the middle of the night!”

Anything about Eino interested me. I knew that mid-meal was a time when humans liked to feed themselves, in the middle of the day. I had appeared in the market around midday! So I had met Eino right after he had yelled at Fahno, then gone looking for a way to sneak his scroll into the Raringa.

Erem inhaled, sitting forward. “Only he could get away with that.”

“Maybe. Rumor has it he was at Yukur, with a bunch of other boys breaking curfew, all of ’em cavorting like traitors of old!”

“No!”

I was not supposed to tell, so I bit my bottom lip. But I was so curious! Maybe I could ask about things that weren’t about the anatun? “I don’t understand,” I said, carefully. “Why was Eino upset? What is a Mikna?”

They looked at each other, Erem suddenly squirming. “This is just servant gossip, Lady,” Erem said. “We shouldn’t have brought it up in front of you. It’s nothing of import.”

“I’m forty days old,” I said solemnly, and they blinked. “Oh! Forty-one. It is important to me.”

They stared, then giggled behind their hands, and I smiled, too, even though I didn’t think it was that funny. Finally Juem sighed. “Mikna’s a who, not a what,” he said. “She’s another enulai practicing in Darr, one of Fahno’s protégés.”

“But not the only other enulai practicing in Darr,” Erem interjected. “Darr is blessed with three, though we’ve only got maybe seven godlings altogether living in the country.”

“Two again,” said Juem. “Fahno’s retired.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Mikna,” I said, hoping they would get to the point.

Juem chuckled at me. “Mikna is by all accounts the better enulai. Older, stronger, with a bigger stable of godlings. And she’s old Darre—from an old clan, that is, with conqueror roots and traditional ways. Always had a bit of magic, but a few years back a godling took up with a boy from the clan, and decided to make a daughter with him. Godlings aren’t much for raising demons, so she gave the child to the clan, and they’ve been enulai ever since.”

I nodded. “Eino.”

“I was getting there!” He grinned at my impatience. “Eino’s old enough to be married off, see. More than, but Fahno-enulai’s better than most clan matriarchs; she didn’t want him going off to be a father when he was barely more than a boy himself. But he’s just gotten prettier with the extra years, and word’s out about how strong his magic is. That usually means the demon blood is strong, too—which makes our Eino the perfect sire for the next generation of enulai, in any clan.”

“But then there’s the other enulai clan in Darr,” said Erem, leaning forward so I would know that what he had to say was important, too. “That’s Lumyn’s people. Lumyn’s not much for the enulai art; the blood runs weak in her, probably because they’ve been breeding with foreigners for years. Amn and such.” They both grimaced; I nodded, though I had only the vaguest idea of what he was talking about. “Lumyn even trained outside Darr, down somewhere in Senm. But she’s of marrying age, too, and she came a-courting Eino as well—and Eino seems to like her better.”

It was a little confusing, but I understood. Sort of. “If they both want babies from Eino, why doesn’t he just give them both babies?” It seemed the simplest solution.

They both stared at me. “They want husbands, not just the children those husbands will make,” said Juem, finally, once he stopped looking appalled. “Who else is going to bathe the children and feed them and teach them the ways of two clans, and protect them if the home’s invaded? Women risk their lives enough to bear children and provide for them by tool or by blade; the least men can do is handle things after that.”

“Oh.” I frowned, wondering if Eino was much interested in feeding babies. He would be really good at protecting them, though!

“So,” Juem continued, reaching for more serry juice, “now there’s two clans fighting hard for our little Eino. And he doesn’t want the one his beba’s picked.”

“It’s done,” said Erem, shaking his head. “If you said she’s picked Mikna—”

“Now, when have you ever known Eino to give in to what somebody else wanted?”

Yeah, that didn’t sound like Eino at all.

But—“I don’t know if Eino wants either of them,” I said, frowning to myself. I thought maybe Eino really just wanted to dance, and maybe be an enulai himself, and do other things that men long ago used to do. Maybe men got married back then, but if so they got married, and it sounded like Fahno and these other women wanted Eino to marry .

Erem belched. “He doesn’t have a choice. Fahno’s got no heirs, see.”

I must have frowned in confusion, because Juem explained: “She had three sons, but they went off to marry into other families, like boys do. She had a daughter, Tehno, but Tehno didn’t get much of the blood—the demon blood, you know? Not enough to become enulai after Fahno. But Tehno married Arolu, and they made Eino, who did have it. It’s a throwback sort of thing like that sometimes.”

“OK,” I said, trying to parse it all.

“And that would be fine; Tehno wasn’t an enulai, but she’d proven herself capable of bearing children with the gift, and that would’ve been enough for her to inherit. But then Tehno went off and got herself killed a few years ago, trying to do business with the Litaria.” He sighed. “Damned criminals.”

“What’s a Litaria?”

“Bad people.” He scowled.

Erem nodded. “Back in the days of the Bright, they were the only people allowed to use magic. Nowadays there’s lots of people and godlings to do magic—but the Lit’s still got the strongest mortal stuff, called scrivening. So they throw their weight around, run a lot of black market and shady magic ventures. Tehno wasn’t demon enough to become an enulai, but she was demon enough that her blood was still poison to gods—if enough of it was taken, and distilled.” His face hardened. “So they lured her to a meeting place for some deal they’d worked out, and then they killed her for her blood. It was a big scandal because enulai are supposed to keep the Lit from running amok, not make deals with them.” He sighed. “Poor Fahno. She wiped out the branch of the Lit that did it, but…” He spread his hands.

I inhaled. “Enulai have to be demons so they can kill gods if they have to…but people try to hurt them for being demons?”

Juem nodded. “Another reason why enulai look after godlings; they help godlings and their godlings help them, usually. But Tehno didn’t have any watching her back.” He sighed heavily. “And if Fahno can’t make or adopt another heir, then her clan will dissolve when she dies. The house and all her assets will go to the Council, and Arolu and Eino will end up on the street with nothing. Fahno’s only chance is to marry Eino off, adopt one of their daughters, and continue the clan that way.”

It was too much mortally stuff. I was getting bored. Only one thing mattered. “Eino could be Fahno’s heir,” I said, carefully. “He’s got lots of magic, and probably the scary blood, too.”

Juem coughed, in a polite sort of way. “He’s a boy, Lady Shill. There are boy enulai, of course, but not here in Darr.”

Ohhhh!! Was that why they’d told Eino he didn’t have the temperament to be an enulai? But boy-temperaments were not different from girl-temperaments, or whatever mortals called Naha-temperaments. And was that why Eino wanted the people in the Raringa to consider letting boys inherit stuff? If they changed the rules, he would be able to stay with his own clan.

We finished the ginger-serry juice, talking about nothing after that. Then I left the kitchen and went to see if Eino was awake yet. His room was empty, so I followed his scent-feel to the bathroom, where there was water still on the floor with some of the sweat from his dance the night before in it. After that I tracked him to another room where there were lots of pretty, elaborate robes hanging on racks. One of them was gone, and the scent of perfume was in the air, with Eino’s smell still strong underneath. I grinned, because Find Eino was a fun game even if it was kind of easy! I followed his smell to another room, where he’d eaten some things—and then finally down a long corridor I saw him! He was standing at the end of it, looking into a big room beyond; he did not see me. His shoulders were very tight and his face had gone hard and blank like a mask again.

I was thinking about running up behind him and surprising him, when suddenly people started yelling in the room beyond!

“—completely improper—” That was Arolu. He sounded mad!

“I think I’m done with propriety, thank you, Arolu-wo.” A strange woman!

“Fahno-enulai will not approve!”

“Let her proceed,” said another strange woman! She sounded bored, and maybe annoyed. “It’s a pitiful gesture, but if she feels compelled to make it, who are we to stand in her way?”

Confused, I came to the doorway beside Eino. He didn’t look at me, though Arolu did. Only for a second, though; he was focused on the two strange women in front of him. I wasn’t sure why at first—until I caught both the women’s scents, and realized they smelled a little like Eino, and Fahno: their own scents were underlain by a peculiar bitterness and magic, like something maybe a little bit dangerous. Did that mean they were demons, too? And probably enulai, too! That meant these must be the women that the servants had told me about: Mikna, who had been chosen to marry Eino, and Lumyn, whom Eino liked better.

One of the women was stocky and darker-skinned, standing near the door with one hand on her hip and a look of contempt on her face. The other woman was already crossing the room to Eino and pressing something into his hands. She was older than him—they both were—and taller than any Darren woman I’d seen, paler brown and narrower in frame. She dressed in more colors than most Darren women, too: usually they stuck to tight-fitting blacks and grays, while boys wore loose color. But above her black leggings she had on a vest that was as green as the forest. It was very pretty, and almost matched her eyes, which were a pale version of the same shade.

“For you,” she said firmly, to Eino. Her voice shook with emotion as she held Eino’s hands. “Gods grant that one day we can use it together.” Just as quickly she pulled away, and turned to face the other woman.

Eino stared back at the woman in green in a way that…I frowned and touched his arm, and he jumped and stared at me as if it had hurt. No one but him and Arolu had even noticed me. He was almost crying! And he felt awful inside, buzzy and angryhurt like there were bees in his soul. He clutched the thing she’d given him, a small cloth-wrapped parcel, to his breast.

I didn’t know what it meant, that he was so upset! I didn’t like that these strange women had hurt him. Then Fahno-enulai came into the room from the other doorway, and everything got way, way worse. Um, and maybe some of that was my fault.

“Lumyn-enulai,” she said to the tall woman. I had never seen Fahno look so angry. “If you had a courting-gift to offer for Eino, the traditional thing to do would have been to give it to his father, or me.”

The tall woman let out a harsh laugh. “If I had, he’d never have received it. I’ve no patience for tradition, Fahno-enulai; didn’t you tell me that was my failing, once? And it wasn’t a courting-gift.” She shrugged; it felt like a lie, somehow, and I did not like her for that. “It was simply a trinket I found, and which I thought your grandson might like. Will you begrudge him something so unimportant?”

“Nevertheless. I did not invite you to this house.”

Lumyn inclined her head as if conceding something. “You did, however, inquire via the union about available enulai who might attend the newborn godling, Lady Shill. Did you not? Forgive me, but I thought you were looking for help.”

I frowned, because she was lying again. Whatever she had given Eino had made him sad; it was obviously more than a trinket. I really did not like her at all.

“I summoned Mikna for that purpose,” Fahno said, moving slowly closer to Lumyn. She was old and wide and I could feel how her back hurt, but in that moment she was like a big old bear, lumbery and scary. “You lack the strength to deal with a godling like Shill, and now I see you lack the discipline as well.”

“‘Managing gods is as much a matter of compatibility and temperament as sheer strength,’” said Lumyn, and Fahno stopped, wincing. Lumyn smiled. “That is from your teachings, is it not? I came because this godling of yours is a free and glorious creature, like all her kind, and she should have choices—rather than having others’ wills foisted upon her.”

Another lie! I clenched my fists. But now the stocky woman—Mikna?—spoke. “Foolishness,” she said. “The godling is but a child, according to Fahno’s description. ‘Free and glorious creatures’ who don’t understand the world cannot be trusted to make such important choices on their own. To attempt it may seem like kindness, but in truth, it is cruel.” She stepped forward, and her whole posture said GO AWAY. “Do you truly want to help, Lumyn? Are you enulai enough, Darre enough, to truly care? Then let the people who know the situation best make the decision—and be mature enough to abide by it.”

But now I was confused, and angrier! Because this was somehow a lie, too.

Lumyn shook her head. “A godling child isn’t some helpless, mindless creature!” she said. “She can be shown the world, and helped to make the decision in full knowledge. To treat her otherwise—like an object to be fought over, like a pet—is a fundamental misjudgment of who and what she is. That is cruelty.”

None of them had even noticed me, so focused were they on each other. I looked at Eino, worried. He had fixed his eyes on the floor, and he was stiff and tight all over. I got madder, seeing how upset he was. I wasn’t sure how, but I was sure they were being mean! And even if they were all scary demons, I could not let them be mean to Eino!

So I marched into the middle of the room, into the space between them, my fists tight. “Hey! I’m right here!”

All three women flinched, and stared at me as if it was the first time they’d even realized I was in the room. And that was how I finally figured out the lie. My mouth fell open.

“You aren’t even really talking about me, are you? None of you!” I looked over at Eino, who hadn’t moved. “Everything you’re saying is really about him!”

Fahno sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Gods. Lady Shill, I wish…” She shook her head. “Yes. This is about Eino’s future.”

“But he doesn’t like it!” I pointed at Eino again. “He’s all upset! All three of you are mad at each other, about him, and none of you are even looking at him!”

Fahno looked, and her expression grew pained. “Yes…yes. Arolu, ah, please take Eino back to his rooms—” Arolu nodded and moved toward Eino.

“No,” said Eino. He was still staring at the floor; the bundle that Lumyn had given him was still in his hand. “You’re right, Beba; this is about my future. Shouldn’t I hear this?” All of a sudden he looked up, and Fahno flinched at his glare. “Since I’m not permitted to choose my fate, I should at least face it with open eyes. Is that not the way of the Darre?”

Fahno’s jaw muscles flexed, and then she focused on me again. “This is about you, Lady Shill—though I will allow that it’s not just about you. I had invited Mikna-enulai here to meet you, because I felt she would be an appropriate match for you.”

Mikna inclined her head. “And it is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Shill.”

“I don’t like you,” I said. She raised her eyebrows. Then to Lumyn I said, “And I don’t like you, either. You both made Eino get sad. You shouldn’t have made him sad!”

Lumyn took a deep breath. “Lady Shill, I see that you consider Eino a friend. It troubles you that he’s unhappy right now, and I feel the same way. My gift, believe it or not, was meant to cheer him.” She glanced at Eino. “I’m sorry that it didn’t.”

“That’s not your doing,” Eino said softly. His voice was thicker than usual, and rough. Arolu sort of tsked and came over, taking Eino’s shoulder.

“Enough,” Arolu said to the women. “Please.” At this, they all sort of shifted or looked away, and then Fahno sighed.

“There’s still the matter of Lady Shill’s disposition,” she said, which I guess was a way of changing the subject. She folded her arms. “I…appreciate that you felt it appropriate to come here, Lumyn-enulai, but I remain convinced that Mikna-enulai is the better choice.”

Lumyn sort of smirked. “Lady Shill has made it clear she dislikes both of the options she’s been presented.”

“That’s right,” I said. I was annoyed! They kept talking about me like I wasn’t there! “I don’t want either of you!”

Fahno scowled. “You must have an enulai, Lady Shill, or leave this world per the Compact between your kind and mortalkind. Have you decided to leave?”

“I’m not leaving!” Now I was scared she would make me go, or call Ia, who would make me go. That made me madder still. “I just don’t like any of this! I don’t want somebody who’s going to talk about me like I’m not here, or say things about one person when they really mean it about another person, or, or—” I couldn’t articulate it. I was shaking, I was so mad—but at the same time, I felt weird. Sort of ugly inside, shaking, too, wibbly and kind of gross. I wanted to cry, and I didn’t know why. “I want Eino!”

Fahno inhaled; Mikna threw a sharp look at him, then back at me. Lumyn frowned. “Eino?”

“Eino!” I yelled it, and everybody jumped, because I had slipped and my voice had gotten too loud again—not loud enough to damage anything, but enough that the windows rattled and a vase shivered on the side of the room. I bit my lip and pushed my voice down to soft again. “Sorry. But I don’t understand why he can’t be my enulai. Everybody says it’s because he’s a boy, but he’s not a boy, he’s a demon, and he’s full of magic, and I know he’d be a really good enulai for me because I actually like him! Why not him?”

Fahno was staring at me, and then she looked at Eino. That was when I realized I’d done a bad thing, because I’d promised Eino I wouldn’t tell about him going out to dance and stuff. And I hadn’t—but now Fahno knew that we’d met before, somehow, and my words were maybe getting Eino in trouble. I bit my lip, but it was too late.

But then Eino spoke behind me, and his voice was so harsh and bitter that it made me feel even more bad inside, because suddenly I knew I had done the same thing as the other women. I had been selfish, and used him without even doing anything good for him, just like Arolu feared.

“You can’t have me, Shill,” he said. He sounded both sad and angry, but I looked at him without eyes and saw that he was smiling. I didn’t understand it. “It’s like I told you: an enulai is a person, trained in an art demanding great skill. I cannot be a person; I am chattel, instead. I am nothing.” He turned to go.

“You’re not nothing,” I said, stricken. He was so hurt. I had helped hurt him, and it was terrible! I ran forward a few steps, holding up a hand after him, but he didn’t see me as Arolu sighed and guided him away.

But it was all wrong! He was worse! I had made him worse and IT WAS ALL WRONG.

“You’re not nothing!” I shouted it, not with my voice this time but everything else, and the planet shook. I set my feet and crouched and yelled at the ground without a voice, because I didn’t want to hurt anybody but I was hurting, too, like nothing I had ever felt before, and I had to stop it! I had to make Eino know! “You’re not! You’re not! You’re not nothing and I won’t ever let you be nothing!”

“Shill!” Fahno cried, but I didn’t hear her. I didn’t want to hear her. I didn’t want the mortal realm to be like this. It shouldn’t be like this! I understood now: Eino was like me, not the right shape for the role his parents needed him to fill. He was not the decorative, obedient thing that everyone in Darr wanted him to be, and it was hurting him that he couldn’t be. Nobody should try to make children be what they aren’t. Everyone should just be what they were supposed to be! Everything was wrong and terrible! ALL EXISTENCE WAS WRONG AND TERRIBLE AND IT SHOULD BE BETTER!

I screamed this at the ground, at existence, and tried to make it be, but I was not one of the Three or even a particularly strong godling. Nothing got any better.

And then soft, perfumed hands took hold of me, and big colored sleeves folded round me, and Eino’s hard chest pressed against my face. “Hush, Shill,” he said. “Hush, you silly creature. It’s all right.”

It was…it was not all right. But I felt better anyway. So I stopped screaming, and I pressed my face into his chest and realized only then that I’d been crying, and when he hugged me I felt like everything would be all right, even if that was probably a lie, too.

“I’m sorry,” I said into his chest. “I didn’t mean to treat you like nothing, too.”

“Did you?” His hand stroked my hair; it felt nice. He would be a good father, if he ever did make babies.

I swallowed hard, hitched, and then took a deep breath so I could talk. “I said what I wanted from you and I didn’t even ask you.”

“Ah. Well, I’m used to that.” He sighed. Then he said, not to me, “Relax. It was just a little tantrum, and it’s over already.”

“I’d hardly call that ‘little,’” said Ia, who I hadn’t even realized had come. “And it isn’t a tantrum, strictly. Fahno-enulai, is anyone hurt?”

“No,” said Fahno. I could tell she was trying to be calm; why? Because I had scared her. I felt worse, realizing it, but Eino stroked my back and I felt better. “She was quite careful to avoid doing anything that harmed mortals, I noticed.”

“Ah. Then there’s hope for her yet.”

I pulled my teary face away from Eino and glared at him. “Don’t be mean, Sibling.”

Ia, who stood among the three women looking pale and strange and so out of place, lifted an eyebrow. But then he pushed up his glasses and glanced at Fahno. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d like to take my sibling away for a talk. I’ll return her by nightfall. Hopefully you and your fellow enulai will have worked out your…jurisdictional issues by then.”

Fahno grimaced. “I appreciate your delicate phrasing, Ia.” She looked at me. “Forgive me, Shill. We shouldn’t have fought in front of you. And…” She hesitated, then faced her grandson. “I hope that you too will forgive me, Eino. I just want to help you. I know you don’t believe that.”

Eino only sighed. I pushed away from Eino and stood up to glare at all of them. “You shouldn’t have hurt Eino in front of me. But…” I bit my lip. “I did it, too. And the thing is, Eino’s really strong. He can fight for himself.” I turned to him. “If you do, I’ll help you.”

Eino was staring at me, half amused and half still sadhurt. “I don’t think I’m ready to declare war on my family and friends, Shill.” His smile faded, and he faced Fahno again. “I know you mean well, Beba. Believe me, this would be easier if you hated me.”

With that, a deeply uncomfortable silence fell. Arolu resumed urging Eino to come with him, and this time Eino obeyed. Fahno shook her head in their wake, in between glaring at both Mikna and Lumyn. Lumyn all but ignored her, gazing longingly after Eino. Mikna, at least, looked abashed—and then she turned a thoughtful gaze on me.

With an annoyed glare round the room, Ia stepped forward and summoned me away with a flick of his eyes.

We appeared in a place that was almost-nothing: a big wide grassy hill, overlooking a big flat stretch of more grass and flowers and stuff. There was nothing in the sky but blue, and nothing walking on the grass but bugs and tiny mice and a snake or two, except snakes do not walk. It was quiet and it made me feel quiet inside, so I sat and drew up my knees and wrapped my arms around them and put my head down.

“What you felt, just now, was your antithesis,” Ia said. He stood next to me, watching the grass wave in the wind. “That’s what mortals call it, and the word serves well enough. Something in that room was the opposite of what you are—not just its negation, but its active obliteration. They wounded you and didn’t even realize it. That will always be the danger, Sibling. They think of us as powerful, and we are, but…they can damage us so easily, in ways they barely understand. If we let them.”

That was what an antithesis felt like? “It hurt,” I said, rubbing my tummy. My head hurt, too, and bits of my soul were all achy and tender. “I tried not to hurt them back, though.”

“Commendable, given your youth. Many older gods would not have been able to resist lashing out in reaction.” I perked up a little, and felt better, at hearing I was commendable. He’d never said anything nice about me before. But then he sighed. “Shill, I’m going to ask you again to return to our realm.”

I gasped, hurt again but in a different way. “Why? Why, Ia, I’ve been really good—”

“Yes. You have been.” That stopped me. If he thought I was good, then why? “But Shill, you’ve been in this realm barely more than a day, and look at what’s happened.”

“I—” I frowned, more confused. “What’s happened?”

“You care about them.” I looked up at him finally, and he looked at me, and his face was heavy and sad in a way I had never seen before. “It’s impossible not to, if you stay here long enough, but for you it took only one day. And in that day they’ve damaged you. That means you’re vulnerable to them, Sibling—more so than most of us. Something in your nature must make you that way, or maybe it’s simply that you’re a child. But we can die, Shill, of the things they do to us. You do not understand yet what that means, but…I’ve seen too many of us die, lately.”

It was nice that Ia did not want me to die. But I did not like that he wanted me to leave the mortal realm.

“Maybe,” I said, trying to understand even as I spoke, “if I understand what happened, I might understand what my antithesis is, and then I won’t get hurt by it again.”

Ia shook his head. “This entire realm is inimical to us in so many ways, Shill. Everything is so…concentrated. There’s no way to escape the threat completely while you remain here.”

“I don’t care! I knew it was dangerous before I came. Even Naha told me not to come, and she’s not scared of anything.”

“Untrue, Shill. She fears the loss of those she loves.” Ia sobered. “I thought he would never stop mourning Sieh. In the end, he went beyond the edges of our realm, into the nothingness. I followed him for a time, because I can, and because I worried he would…well.” He shrugged a little, but he did not have to say it. Everybody can see that one day, Naha might become a Maelstrom. It is a maybe and not a probably, or worse an eventually, but that it is even a maybe is a scary thing. That’s Naha, though: a scary, changeable thing.

“But he just mourned,” Ia continued. He gazed into the distance without really seeing it; there was nothingness in his eyes. “Mourned and wandered, as if he was…searching for something. I don’t know what. Eventually he went farther than even I could follow, and there’s no telling how long he was gone. There’s no time in the nothing, you see. When he returned…she was different, in many ways. Perhaps that’s what she needed to heal.” He looked at me. “Nahadoth has had time enough to love you, too, Shill. Will you make her mourn again for a lost child, so soon?”

I bit my lip and squirmed and looked at my knees. I had learned from the mortals, though, and instead of answering this really hard question, I changed the subject. “Um, Ia? Who is your enulai?”

He said nothing for a moment. I was scared he would make me answer the question. But finally he said, “I don’t have one.”

I frowned. “But Fahno said all godlings—”

“I know.” He seemed to hesitate. “I’m not like other godlings, Shill. Haven’t you noticed?”

The question confused me because no two godlings were alike. “No?”

I felt him look at me, like he didn’t quite believe me. But then he shook his head, almost to himself. “It has been so long since a new godling walked among us. I’d forgotten that you don’t see it. Not at first.”

Then there was a new voice behind us, and I jumped, but Ia only went very still and narrowed his eyes at the sound of it.

“He is a monster,” said the woman. Said the godling, I realized, even as I turned and looked up—and up—to take in all of her mortal shape. She was like seven feet tall! And wider than me and Ia put together! Her fists were great big, and her bones were great big, and her headkerchief was great big; everything was great big!

I inhaled, grinning, and stood to face her. “I want to get that big.” Her eyebrows lifted a little, I think in amusement.

“A monster even among our kind, like all the elontid,” she continued. “Nahadoth, for all her chaos, is something. Ia alone among us is the abyss: no god can stare into him long without losing themselves, in terror. So he lives here in the mortal realm, among beings who cannot grasp the horror of him. He never comes to our realm, where the facade would not last. He needs no enulai to keep him in check, for who would foul his only home?”

Ia, face so composed that I thought at once it was another kind of lie, finally stood and turned to her. “Zhakkarn,” he said, calmly. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

She turned aside to reveal Mikna, walking up behind her. “I asked Lady Zhakkarn to come,” Mikna said. I bristled at once, but she held up a hand. “Please, Lady Shill. We’ve begun on the wrong foot, and for that I apologize. I ask, however, that you hear me out.”

I folded my arms. “I don’t want to. I don’t like you.”

“She didn’t ask you to like her,” Ia snapped. “I don’t like you, but I listen to you, don’t I?”

Because grown-up godlings listened, even if they did not always agree. I sighed very hard but unfolded my arms. I did not try to smile, though, because I was so mad that my bottom lip poked out instead.

“Stop sulking,” Ia said.

I stamped my foot at him. “Stop yelling at me!”

“I didn’t—” Ia’s teeth clamped shut with an audible click, and he looked away.

“You should have spent more time around Sieh, Sibling,” Zhakkarn said to him. Her voice was big, too, though most of it did not show its bigness. You could feel it, though, underneath the softness of her words. Inside her was a great big bloodthirsty roar.

“Thank you, Zhakkarn, but I didn’t because I have little interest in children. Or rather, not any interest.” He pushed his glasses up and put his hands behind his back.

Mikna grimaced. “I too have little experience with children, I’m afraid. But Shill—I do work with godlings, which is why I asked Lady Zhakkarn to join me in greeting you. She has…rather more experience of mortals than I do of godlings.” An odd, uncomfortable look passed over her face; beside her, Zhakkarn was still and calm as the cloudless sky, though of course we could all hear that huge awful roar. Ia sighed faintly. “I hoped that she might help to bridge the gap between us, if she was willing—and fortunately she is.”

“I told you I didn’t want you,” I said, getting a little mad again. I didn’t like that she sounded all reasonable. I didn’t feel like being polite. “Tell me what you want or go away.”

Nobody said anything, though Mikna raised an eyebrow—and Zhakkarn looked at me. Just that. But all at once I changed my mind about being rude to Mikna.

“What I want,” Mikna said after a moment, “is to show you something. Will you come with us?”

I was more polite this time, because Zhakkarn. “Um, where?”

“To the Proving Ground,” said Zhakkarn.

I frowned. “What’s that? Why?”

Mikna said, “Because, as I realized after you left, you are a girl of proving age—or you would be, if you were human and actually the age that you resemble.” She paused. “You’ve been trying to understand Eino, haven’t you? Eino is Darre. If you want to understand him better, you need to understand his people.”

I blinked. Oh. Ohhhh. “Um.” But she was right. I’d only met a handful of mortals so far, and I could see already that all their little strangenesses—what language they spoke and how they dressed and what they looked like and what they called themselves—were important to them. To Eino. So…“OK.”

With that, Zhakkarn took us somewhere else. I thought at first she would take Ia and me and Mikna, but when we appeared in a big dusty courtyard surrounded by high walls and a circle of wooden railings, Ia was nowhere to be seen. “Ia is male,” Mikna said, when she saw me looking around. “This place isn’t for them.”

“He’s not really a boy,” I said, folding my arms.

“He is as much male as you are female,” said Mikna. Which made me bristle, until…oh. Well, OK. “And there is…history, between him and Lady Zhakkarn, as you probably gathered. It’s probably for the best.”

Something to do with the Gods’ War, probably, I decided. Lots of my older siblings were still mad about that. “OK.”

She nodded and backed up, spreading her arms so I would look around, which I did. “In Darr, a girl’s ninth year is considered sacred. Three times three, you see, and we have always honored the Three and all their children, not merely Itempas or any single one. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a special, hmm, affinity for any godling.” She glanced at Zhakkarn, who had pulled off her kerchief to reveal close-cropped curls of bright blue-white hair. Zhakkarn regarded her in stoic silence, which would have scared me, but Mikna just smiled again.

“Well, I’m not nine,” I said, folding my arms. Honestly, though, I was curious.

“I know. And by the time you are nine in truth you will understand more of creation than any mortal child—but for convenience’s sake, let’s treat you as nine years old now. At nine, a Darren girl—at least in the old days—” At this she faltered a little, her expression turning grim; I wondered why. Then she recovered. “A Darren girl would face her first foe in battle. Come.”

She beckoned, and I came forward to where she pointed: a square of black bricks set into the dusty ground, near the wooden railing. There was another black square across the circle from it. When I was standing on the square, Mikna nodded. “Good. Let’s get started.”

And then Zhakkarn got up and moved to stand on the black square opposite me.

My mouth fell open. “But I can’t beat you!” I could feel it: her very nature was fighting, blood, pain. I glared at Mikna. “I thought you wanted me to fight you.”

Mikna looked amused. “You’re still a god, Lady Shill, and one who as yet lacks a great deal of self-control. I have no wish to die. But more importantly, a nine-year-old Darren girl’s first foe would generally be an adult woman of the same clan. The goal of this contest is not to win; it is to learn how to face a foe who is larger, stronger, and more experienced.”

“And lose!”

“That is possible,” said Zhakkarn. She had taken a stance with her fists upraised and ready; suddenly I did not like that her fists were so great big. I was not really afraid of her body; that was just mortal stuff, like mine. What made me swallow and sweat was that—oh, no—I could feel how the great big roar inside her was quiet again. Focused. On me.

I swallowed hard, then took a deep breath. OK. This was scary, but maybe it would be like when I had gone to talk to Ral the Dragon, who never did anything except roar so I’d had to roar with it. Zhakkarn was full of battle, so I would have to battle with her. And then maybe we could be friends! This made me be not scared anymore. And anyway, I had battled before with Eino, right? The dance had been a kind of fight. The moment I thought of that, I got excited. Maybe I would like this, too!

Zhakkarn lowered her chin, her eyes suddenly sharp. “There seems to be a bit of the warrior in you already, Sibling.”

Was there? “I was in a fight last night!” I said. “It was fun.”

Zhakkarn smiled. “Let’s hope this one is, too, little Sibling.”

Then she came at me. It was so fast I didn’t have time to be scared, except it was also so fast I couldn’t think, so I sort of squeaked and scrambled backward and hit the wooden railing. But she was still coming! So I folded myself over to the other side of the ring, where she had been.

And SHE DID IT, TOO.

So then her fist was up and she punched like WHAM and it hurt lots, like A WHOLE LOT, like OH HELLS I DIDN’T KNOW MORTAL STUFF COULD HURT LIKE THAT. I tried to will it not to hurt and it kept hurting, even! The mortal realm is not nice at all. Before I could get up she KICKED me. That wasn’t fair! It hurt lots more. I yelled, because I couldn’t help it. Stuff was broken inside me. Then I tried to crawl and she grabbed me by the ankle and THREW ME ACROSS THE RING! I went into the wall some, because the bricks were not very sturdy. And she was STILL COMING.

“HEY!” I yelled, as she walked toward me. It took me a minute to push myself even partially out of the wall, and then I had to spit out some teeth along with rocks. I clung to the edges of the hole I was in, panting. “That is not fair! How am I supposed to fight when you don’t wait?”

“Do you think a real enemy will politely wait for you to recover?” Zhakkarn was still coming, and oh, was her face scary. Eyes like hard steel and jaw tight like, like, like I dunno SCARY TIGHT THINGS what did it even matter she was gonna KILL me. “Do you think battle is fair?”

I blinked, because well, I had. The dance with Eino…but now I knew that hadn’t really been battle. It had just been play. Eino dreamt of fighting the way the men of long ago had fought, but if that had been how they’d really fought, no wonder they’d lost.

But—

(I had to stop thinking for a bit, because Zhakkarn grabbed me out of the wall and a lot of bad things happened for a while. I do not want to talk about them.)

OK, so. But.

I lay on the ground where Zhakkarn had thrown me the last time, trying to understand something that had occurred to me earlier. My eyes were swollen shut, but I could feel Zhakkarn coming again—and also, I could feel that she was disappointed in me, because I hadn’t managed to put up much of a fight. That was worse than the pain, actually, because the pain would go away, but a sibling’s disappointment would not.

But. This was important!

But it bugged me that Eino’s kind of fighting wasn’t real fighting. It should have been. It could have been, maybe, if Eino knew more about how to do it than what he’d learned in musty old spheres and scrolls. Or if Eino had been taught the Proper Way to fight, by someone who had worked with him and sparred with him from when he was small! There was no reason for men’s fighting to be any worse than women’s fighting. Women were not magic or anything; they just knew something the men didn’t.

Zhakkarn picked me up by the neck and held me up in the air with one hand. Also, she was choking me. “Do you yield, Sibling?”

I felt like I was on the edge of something—something besides passing out. Oh, right! Darren women knew other women had learned to fight, so they tried. They got good at it because they believed they could. But the men did not try. They did not believe.

(Something cracked in my neck. Ow.)

And no one else believed in them, either. That was why Fahno wanted Eino to be married, was making him be married, when he didn’t want to be. It was because Fahno didn’t think boys could be strong. But boys could be strong! And girls could be strong! Everybody could be strong, if they all got the same knowledge, and if they tried. If they all believed!

I gasped, which was really saying something because my throat was all closed up. And I opened my eyes some, because all of a sudden they were not so bruised and hurt. I stared at Zhakkarn, who blinked.

I get it now! I said into her head, since I couldn’t talk. And then I grabbed her arm to brace myself, and curled up, and kicked her in the chest with both feet as hard as I could!

We both went down, because she still had hold of me, and because Papa Tempa had filled the mortal realm with MOMENTUM which was annoying. She did stagger, though, and let me back down to the ground by accident. That was good, because suddenly I was strong again, or at least not weak! And even if I didn’t know how to fight well, I believed that I could fight, and really that is what matters. And! I did kind of know how to fight because of Eino’s dance, which was too fair and pretty to be proper fighting but only because nobody had used it for proper fighting in godsknewhowlong, and nobody ever would if I didn’t try, so I spun and whirled my arms like I would have in the dance and that made Zhakkarn let go and I was free!

…To fall down, because lots of stuff was broken in me. Mortal realm, mortal rules. I said some bad words.

Zhakkarn straightened, looking down at me, and all of a sudden she didn’t look disappointed anymore.

“More than a bit of the warrior,” she said. “That you scored even one blow is excellent, Sibling. I look forward to our next battle, if you fight like this from the outset.”

“I ab nebba fahdig you agan,” I said through messed-up teeth, glaring at her.

“Never say never,” said Mikna, coming into the narrow range of my sight. She crouched, smiling. “I get the feeling you’re stubborn, Lady Shill. You should probably yield, though, unless you want this battle to contin—”

“YIELD.” I did not yell it loud enough to hurt anybody, but it was pretty loud. Mikna grimaced, but laughed. And—oh, thank our parents—Zhakkarn folded her arms to wait for me to heal.

It took a few minutes. Once my stomach-muscles could work again I sat up and glared at them some more. “Not fun.”

“Battles rarely are,” said Zhakkarn, shrugging.

“Well now I know that!” I had just grown some new teeth, so I could talk better now. I was so mad at Mikna! “That didn’t have any point!”

“Didn’t it?” Mikna raised her eyebrows. “But you’ve learned so much, Lady Shill.”

“Like what?”

“Enough that you seem to have grown. Fahno said that might happen, particularly when you got closer to discovering your nature.” At this I blinked, and looked down, but it was true! Now I was long and leggy, and there were little bumps on my chest where my body was thinking about growing breasts.

“I don’t get it,” I said, staring down at all that leg. “I only took this shape so I could be around you mortals. I turned into a lizard already, and some other stuff. Why is it only this shape that changes without me meaning it to?”

Zhakkarn crouched, not that that helped much; she still loomed over us both. But now her expression was a little sad, though she was smiling. “This happened to Sieh in his last few years,” she said. “Not quite in the same way, or for similar reasons—but Sibling, we are living creatures, immortal or not. Life…grows.”

Didn’t it! I got to my feet and stood wobbling for a moment. “I’m so tall!” I grinned at Mikna, who stood, too; she was the same height.

“Perhaps you’ll match Lady Zhakkarn someday after all.” She shrugged. “But if you’ll think about it, Lady Shill, you’ve grown in other ways, too. A girl’s first battle teaches her that the world is not fair.” I blinked and sobered; she nodded, seeing that I understood. “It teaches her to fight despite this, because a true enemy will not relent, and because it is a simple matter of survival. Claim what ground you can and hold it. Get back up if you’re knocked down. A woman’s strength has always lain in not giving up.”

I thought about this. I didn’t hate her anymore, but—“Everybody should learn this, though,” I said, troubled. “Why do you only teach it to women?”

The look on Mikna’s face turned—I don’t know. Pitying? She turned, putting her hands on her hips, and gazed toward the walls of the arena, though it was clear that her thoughts lay far beyond it. “You’re so young, Lady Shill. You’ve had only the barest taste of what we mortals do to each other. Look around this world for a few years, then ask me that question again.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Once we shared this knowledge with our men. Once men honed their skills against women in battle, and had at least some small chance at proving themselves worthy in the way of warriors. A few even became ennu, the figurehead for all that makes us strong as a people. Those were simpler times—the days when Yeine walked among women as a mortal.” I perked up at this. “Back then, we thought that all we had to fear were foreigners. And the gods, of course.”

A demon spoke of fearing gods. “Of course,” I said, really softly.

“But not long after Skyfall,” Mikna continued, “in the new golden age that Darr had begun to enjoy with the ending of the Bright, and the rebuilding after the war—our men turned on us. Not all, certainly, but enough to pose a real threat. They wanted to take over.” A muscle in her jaw tightened. “That’s the way of men, you see, when women don’t keep them in check. They want all, not just some. Nature made them weak: slaves to their impulses, helpless against pain, barely capable of making it out of the womb. Their weakness makes them fearful. Nothing is more dangerous than fearful people with a fresh taste of power.”

I frowned. This did not feel…I wasn’t sure. I was more sophisticated now, able to think bigger thoughts, but maybe I still wasn’t big enough to understand.

Mikna tossed some of her long hair back over her shoulder. “So we crushed the dangerous ones, and made the fateful decision to protect the rest of the men from themselves. But Eino is the proof that Darren flames cannot be smothered so easily. Gods, the fight in him!” She smiled, almost to herself. “How could I not want him? I am a true Darre.”

I looked up at Zhakkarn, who watched me impassively, then back at Mikna. “If you make him do something he doesn’t want, he’ll fight you. Real battle, not fun. Or”—it suddenly occurred to me, and this thought was terrible—“or you’ll make him so hurt and sad inside that he won’t care about fighting anymore. He…he won’t be Eino, if you do that.”

Mikna looked uncomfortable for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Darr is changing. The forests are shrinking, the seasons going strange. We have changed, as we must, but there’s almost nothing left of the warrior Darr anymore. Now we’re merchants.” She said this like it made her mouth taste bad. “A wealthy nation! And with every passing generation, we forget a little more of who we were.”

I looked at Zhakkarn again, because I wasn’t sure what to say. Of course Mikna’s people were changing; that was what life did. And of course their climate was all strange; even now I could hear this world’s moon muttering to itself, disgruntled and unhappy. It had been wandering since Sieh’s end, pulling the tides and the winds with it, changing where rain fell and rivers ran. The forests shrank and the animals learned to eat different things or died and other things ate them and thrived and everything kept on, dying and borning endlessly, in cycles and patterns and repetition. All these things were mortality.

They don’t understand, Zhakkarn said to me without words. Their lives are too short to see the wholeness of it.

I scowled. I’m not even two months old and I understand.

You are a god.

And being a god was more than just being immortal. I sighed, suddenly feeling lonely on a planet teeming with living beings. Zhakkarn got to her feet after a moment, then came over and put a big hand on my shoulder. I wasn’t mad at her anymore after that.

Mikna exhaled, oblivious to us.

“You think Fahno cruel to give Eino to me,” she said. I blinked. “You think me cruel to take him, when he doesn’t want me.”

“Well, yes,” I said. Then I sighed. “But Arolu says you can take care of him, if Fahno dies without an heir.”

She smiled in a lopsided way. “Take care of him? I want nothing of the sort. I’d be a fool not to recognize the strength in him, Shill; that’s precisely why I want him. Call me selfish for it, but I want daughters—and sons, too—with his spirit. It’s as simple as that.”

I started to get mad again; Zhakkarn squeezed my shoulder, gently. “Well, maybe you should ask him to give you some spirit and babies, then!”

She blinked, then laughed. “You have such an odd way of phrasing things.” She sighed. “I will be—careful with him. I’m no brute; I want a helpmeet, not just some stud-beast to be chained away between uses. But, Shill…I did ask him to marry me. And Lumyn asked him. He hasn’t answered either of us…which is why Fahno is forcing the issue.”

“Oh!” Why hadn’t Eino answered her? I would have to ask him. I was beginning to think that understanding this whole mess might be the key to understanding him. And myself.

I had grown, though, and I understood now how important good manners were. “Thank you,” I said. “You made me bigger. I’ll, um, I’ll go think about what you said.” Then I shifted from foot to foot, but I was too grown up now not to acknowledge when I’d been wrong. “And I, uh, I’m sorry I was mean to you.”

She smiled cheerfully. “That’s fine. I got to watch Lady Zhakkarn beat you senseless, after all. Let’s call it even.”

I was surprised into a laugh, though it was not a very good laugh. (Suddenly I understood why so many mortals laughed without really meaning it.) “Um, I’m gonna go find Eino and talk to him now. Bye.”

She nodded, as did Zhakkarn. “Until later, Lady Shill.”

I will stop here to tell you another thing you should know. That day with Mikna was when I realized that it is not their poison that makes enulai powerful. Also, I started to know that having power does not make a person—or a god—better, or right. I did not dislike Mikna anymore, and I probably would even like Lumyn if I gave her a chance…but I thought they were both wrong about a lot of things.

Yes yes OK I know you knew that already you do not have to be obnoxious about it OK.

So I went back to Fahno’s house, not bothering with a body as I moved through it. Lumyn was gone. Fahno was in her study, and the whole room felt of weary frustration; I did not invade her privacy. The servants were just going about their business as usual. Arolu was in a pretty room with a glass skylight where there were comfortable seats and flowers and books and lengths of cloth and thread on skeins. At first I thought he was working on a small embroidered blanket with a hood and little feet, which was in his lap. But he just sat there, unmoving, and after a moment I realized he had something else in his lap: a small ceramic circle which bore a portrait of a woman’s face. I could see her resemblance to Eino in the strength of her jaw and the determination in her gaze. Tehno, Eino’s mother, and Arolu’s lost wife.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. I was confused, because he could not see me; how did he know I was there? But then he touched the circle, and I realized he wasn’t talking to me. I wondered what he was sorry about. Whether he’d gone through this at some point, being given to a woman he maybe didn’t love, made to stuff himself into floofy clothes and quiet rooms when maybe he was the kind of man who wanted to run and shout. Somewhere along the way he had grown to love Tehno, obviously, but when? How? Had it been worth it?

I was a big girl now; I didn’t bother him.

Eino was up on the roof, lounging beneath the canopy of the chair I’d first seen Fahno in. A whole day had passed since that moment; it made me feel nostalgic for how young and silly I’d been back then. He didn’t sit like Fahno, though, who liked to be forward-leaning and intent; instead Eino sat sprawled in the chair, his legs crossed, his arms draped over the rests, an expression of distant boredom in his face. But his face was another kind of lie; mortals did that a lot, I was beginning to see. He was not bored, he was brooding. Angry, with perfect grace. I shaped myself out of ether and settled on the ground beside his chair; he did not seem at all surprised when I did.

“The word is out, Shill,” he said quietly. “Everyone in town is talking about me. How I somehow got the Council to discuss male property inheritance. How I lured a group of innocent, good-hearted boys to Yukur for unnatural revels in the middle of the night. How I’m the reason a boy ran away to Menchey rather than marry the woman his clan had chosen for him. How I’ve been seen talking to men in the sharing houses, and foreigners. How I’ve been gathering an army, and soon it will be the Men’s Rebellion all over again.”

I leaned against his chair. “What’s a sharing house?”

“Where men go when they have no clan to care for them, and when they are not so homely that they are completely without value. They get meals and a bed to sleep in, provided they share it with any woman who wants them.” He smiled thinly. “Father fears I’ll end up in one, at the rate I’m going. I’m beginning to think I might not mind.”

I frowned. Sharing houses did not sound very nice. “Is any of that other stuff true, about you?”

“Does it matter? Home and tradition are threatened. Everywhere, young men of previously honorable character are acting out. Someone must be to blame.”

He sounded sad, too, underneath the mad. Maybe I should not have left, while Lumyn and Fahno and Mikna were still arguing. As I watched him, Eino reached into one of his sleeves and took out something small. I heard the echo of Lumyn’s voice and realized it was the thing she’d given him. A small box. He opened it, tilting it so I could see: inside was a very curvy knife. A beautiful knife, its handle wrapped in shiny white stuff and its sharp blade inlaid with small plates of black stone and red-and-green lacquer, done up in patterns like forest vines. I oohed. “I like that knife!”

“Do you?” Eino was smiling again, but it was still mad and sad and bitter. “I do, too, in spite of myself. Such a pretty threat.”

“Huh?”

He turned the knife over, setting his thumb against its edge. “Not how she sees it, of course. Lumyn is Darre through and through, whatever anyone else thinks. Of course she would give me a circumcision knife, and think it a romantic gesture; that’s how most Darre think of it, after all. It’s how I thought of it, really, until I thought, and realized just how grotesque the whole custom is.”

I knew the word because Papa Tempa had taught it to me. But—“She wants to cut you?”

“Of course. It’s how marriage goes, for Darre. A woman takes a man to her home, and there in solemn, intimate ceremony…” He shrugged. He’d cut his finger. A fat drop of blood welled up as I watched; I cringed away inwardly even as I stayed still and stared, hypnotized. Demon blood. “I suppose I should be glad these aren’t ancient times, when women would just kidnap the men they wanted, cut them to establish their claim, and rape them. We are civilized now. A proper woman gets permission from the boy’s clan head, first.”

I set my jaw. “No one’s going to do anything to you that you don’t want.” The air rang with my words. I was only a little godling; I couldn’t change the universe by word alone. But I could mean it, and Eino felt that. He blinked and looked at me as if finally noticing I was there, though he’d been talking to me all along. This time his smile was not as sad, and more genuine.

“I’m glad I have you for a friend, Shill,” he said, gently. “At least what you want from me is something I’m willing to give.” He reached for me, perhaps to pet my hair, but I flinched away from the blood on his finger, and he blinked. “…Sorry.” He put his hand back in his lap.

I was just proud of myself for not running away this time. I drew up my knees, wrapped my arms around them. “What do you want to do?” I asked. “Are you going to marry Lumyn, or Mikna?”

His voice hardened and his smile faded. “Not you, too, Shill.”

I shrugged, awkwardly. “I don’t care which. I just want to understand how you think about it.”

“Ah. Your quest for understanding.” Abruptly he got up, pacing with the knife in his hand. “What I think is that I don’t want to think about this, Shill. I think there are other problems in the world, other things I could be worrying about, besides who gets to slice me up and ride me! Like how to help you.” He stopped, glaring at me. “I want to be your enulai. But I don’t know my own magic. And you just saw—I haven’t been trained in how to be careful around gods! You should choose Mikna; at least she won’t kill you by accident.”

I wanted to say, I don’t want Mikna, but he was right; she was a better enulai. Maybe only because she’d been trained and he hadn’t, but I didn’t know how to make anyone train him. “She isn’t terrible,” I said, grudgingly.

Eino laughed, pacing again. “No, she isn’t. I’d probably fall in love with either of them if I had half a moment to think about it. But no one will give me that moment, and all I can think about is how unfair all this is. If I’d just been born with the right stuff between my legs…” He shook his head.

I knew how that felt, kind of. “I was supposed to be different, too,” I said, shifting to sit cross-legged. “Everybody thought I would be the new Trickster when I was born. But I’m not. I even thought I could make myself be the Trickster, but none of that has worked. I’m still just me.”

Eino stopped again, his back to me this time. It was sunset now, and he stood stock-still in the slanting red light; it made me think of Papa Tempa. “What do you intend to do about that?”

“Do?” I considered, then finally shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t be what everyone wanted me to be. I can’t even be what I want to be. I’m going to have to find a way to live with what I am, I guess.” As soon as I figured that out.

“And if you can’t? Live with it, I mean.”

I had never thought of that. “I don’t know. I guess…if I really want to, I can always go to Mama—um, Yeine, that is. Or, or find a demon. When gods want to die, that’s what they have to do.”

“Poor creatures.” It sounded like a joke, the way Eino said it, but it didn’t seem very funny. “That you must rely on someone else for the privilege of taking your own life.”

I shrugged a little, not really liking the conversation anymore. “Yeine calls mortality a gift. I think it’s scary, but when you put it that way, maybe it is.”

“Yes.” Eino fell silent. I watched him, and worried. He was so still, just like Papa. But mortals are not meant to be like Itempas. They’re supposed to bend; if they get too much like him, they break.

I could hear some noise downstairs in the house, but I’d sort of pushed it away as unimportant. A moment later, though, I heard footsteps on the stairs that led up to the roof, and then Arolu opened the door. He was breathing hard, his handsome face stark with worry. “Eino,” he said, then seemed to run out of things to say. A moment later, however, he was pushed forward and out of the doorway, and three women in black uniforms stepped out onto the rooftop, with Fahno in tow looking worried.

“Eino mau Tehno?” This was one of the uniformed women. As weapons went she had only a knife strapped across the small of her back, but her hand was on the hilt of this. “You are summoned. The Council would like a word with you.”

“Would they?” asked Eino, as I got to my feet. He didn’t sound alarmed, and suddenly he was smiling. It was a strange smile. “Good. I’d like to talk to them, too.”

I did not know this at the time, but later I showed my older siblings a memory of this smile, and they said it was a lot like Sieh’s had been, when he was up to something scary.

The women in the uniforms took Eino back to the place I’d visited on my first day in the mortal realm: the Raringa, a great domed building where the Warriors’ Council held court and decided the fate of the Darre.

I tried to stay with Eino, because I did not know what was going on but it seemed to be bad. Fahno made me walk with her and Arolu instead, though, because—she said—it would make the Council more prejudiced against Eino if I misbehaved. I wasn’t sure if I believed her, but I stayed quiet and near her anyway, just in case. Mikna and Lumyn were there at the Raringa, too, arriving when we did; Lumyn glanced at us but moved to the other side of a gathering knot of women moving into the chamber, while Mikna came over and nodded briskly to Fahno, her jaw set and tight. She saw me and nodded again. Even Ia was there, appearing quietly beside us as we claimed a spot amid the gathering crowd of onlookers.

“What’s happening?” I whispered to him. A lot of people looked at us; I’d been too loud again.

“I don’t know,” he said, frowning slightly. That made me worry more, and I was already worried lots. I didn’t like the look on Ia’s face. I didn’t like that Eino had said And if you can’t? Live with it.

I especially didn’t like that I knew Eino still had Lumyn’s knife, somewhere hidden in his robes.

At the door of the Council chamber the uniformed women tried to put shackles on Eino. I bared my teeth and made them go away. They looked at him like he had done it. He smiled and said, “There’s no need for that, is there?” And they did not try to put shackles on him again.

Fahno looked at me very hard and suspiciously! But she did not know for sure, and that was what mattered. I had learned a lot from Eino.

Now Eino knelt at the center of a wide circle of some fifty or sixty old women seated on cushions, and one much younger woman who sat on an elevated stool facing him. He was quiet and still, his eyes downcast, his robes a swirl of bright burgundy-emerald jewel tones around him; the women were stark and restless in black and gray, murmuring to one another and glaring over pursed lips and sniffing noses. I didn’t like any of them.

But it was Fahno who made a rumbly sound that made me think of stormclouds, and Fahno who pushed me aside so she could stalk forward and stand in front of Eino, glaring back at the women around her.

“This is a full Council,” she said. Her voice was really quiet; that was how everyone could tell just how mad she was. “Is there some reason why I was not informed of this meeting?”

The young woman took a deep breath; I didn’t blame her. “You’re too close to the situation, Fahno-enulai. You would’ve had to recuse yourself in any case, so we bypassed that step for efficiency’s sake.”

“I would’ve appreciated the chance to recuse myself,” she said, glowering, “especially as then you would’ve had to tell me what the hells this is all about.”

“This isn’t about you, Fahno,” said one of the other women, from the far side of the circle.

“Not about me?” Fahno’s voice was big and wide, like she was; when she used it fully, it almost filled the domed chamber. Several of the women nearest her flinched. “You drag my grandson here, on the eve of his marriage, and this has nothing to do with me?”

Another woman leaned forward, looking as angry as Fahno. “If you want us to consider you, Fahno—and your permissiveness, your indulgence, how this boy’s wildness is due to your incompetence as a clan matriarch, we certainly will—”

“If I may,” said Eino, from where he knelt behind Fahno. He said it lightly, in a pleasant tone, but his voice was just as deep and resonant as Fahno’s; everyone started and turned to him, Fahno included. He smiled and ducked his eyes demurely. “If I may, great warriors, Kitke-ennu, my beba. I would like to speak for myself.”

“This isn’t the time,” Fahno snapped.

“There will be no better, Beba. Please.”

She stared at him; he stared back. For the first time I realized they had the same eyes, just as deepwater black and implacable, even though Eino’s were lined with kohl and silver-lidded and Fahno’s were deep-set and ringed from worry. She shook her head just a little, and I almost heard the speech-without-words between them! Or maybe I imagined it? I won’t be able to protect you, she said, I thought.

I’ll protect myself, he said back, and I shivered all over without knowing why. But at the end of the exchange, Fahno sighed and stepped aside. She lingered in the circle, though, her arms folded, making clear by her presence that Eino was not without his supporters.

I pushed forward through the crowd, too, before Mikna could grab me, and I took Fahno’s hand. She glanced down at me in surprise, and some of the old women gave me bad looks. I did not give them bad looks back! I was being very mature.

“Please,” said Eino. He spoke quietly now, but his back was very straight, his hands very flat in his lap. “May I know why I have been brought here?”

The young woman seemed to consider whether to answer. “There has been an accusation,” she said, finally—and then she eyed Fahno. “One that we have already dismissed as groundless, mind you. It was unofficial in any case, made by Luud mau Esuum, a young unproven man of one of the merchant clans. We are aware that young men can be…excitable.”

Many of the women in the circle nodded, some indulgently, some maliciously. Eino bore it all without a twitch and said, “And what was the nature of the accusation, Kitke-ennu, if I—or my clan matriarch—may know?”

“Sedition.” Kitke-ennu said this flatly, but there was a rustle around the chamber again—not amid the ring of Council-women this time, but the watching crowd, most of whom apparently hadn’t known. Kitke scowled. “But we have dismissed it, out of respect for Fahno-enulai, who has served Darr well in all her years.”

“Sedition!” Eino laughed then, stilling the murmurs; women stared at him, shocked. He shook his head to himself. “Oh, poor Luud. He’d have done better to accuse me of luring him into iniquity; you would have believed that. What did you do to him, to scare him so badly that he told the truth?”

Fahno flinched. Arolu gasped and put his sleeve to his mouth. Several women in the circle tried to speak at once; Kitke quickly held up a hand and leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. “Are you saying the charge is true?”

“That depends on what you think of as sedition.” Eino shrugged, no longer demure or serene. The look on his face was openly contemptuous now; he looked around at the Warriors’ Council the same way Ia had looked at me on that first day, or Zhakkarn on the second—like he knew they were beneath him. He lifted his chin, as if to emphasize this. “I believe the Darre are stronger as a whole people, not with half of our kind reduced to possessions and treated like children. I act in accordance with this belief. Is that sedition?”

“It is!” yelled one of the women behind us, and there were other murmurs in the room, some of them from the circle, others from beyond it. Kitke-ennu glanced around at them without moving her head; her jaw flexed.

“I do not believe so,” she said—and there were murmurs in agreement with this, too, which made me happy. But then Kitke added, “Yet if men would be treated as women, then they must carry themselves as women, and exercise sound judgment, comport themselves with dignity. You cannot act the barbarian, Eino mau Tehno, and expect civilized folk to listen.”

“The men of Darr have been civilized for two hundred years and more,” Eino said, his voice sharp and words quick. “It has gotten us nowhere. Perhaps barbarism will be more effective.”

And he drew his hands into his sleeves for a moment, then slipped them out again; with his left hand he raised Lumyn’s mosaic knife.

There were murmurs again, and gasps, and Fahno froze. “Eino—”

He glanced at her, then set his jaw and drew his hands into his robes again. “I will not be bartered, Beba,” he said. “Not even for your sake.”

“What are you doing?” Arolu, behind us, was trying to come forward; Mikna and Ia held him back. “No, no, he is my son, I cannot let him—”

“There is no need for anything drastic,” Kitke-ennu said, holding up her hands in alarm; she’d half risen to her feet already. “To kill yourself—”

“Kill myself?” Eino laughed again, so harshly that I jumped. “No. I do this with the Warriors’ Council itself as witness, in a house that belongs to all Darre. I am claiming myself.”

We could not see what he did, there inside his robes, but we saw the sudden, sharp jerk of his movement. Saw how his face tightened, his lips drawing back from his teeth. He did not cry out, though I flinched, and so did Ia, at the white flare of his pain. I smelled his demon blood then, a lot of it! And a moment later, spots of darker color appeared on the cloth across his lap.

There were SCREAMS! I was almost one of them! Fahno staggered back, staring at Eino; beyond her, Mikna and Arolu were just as shocked. Ia—he stared, too, but there was the tiniest of admiring smiles on his lips. Lumyn looked ill.

Eino’s face had gone sallow. He swayed where he knelt, and I saw his eyes roll back. He was going to fall! So I ran over and caught him, and held him against me, while everyone around us just kept on freaking out.

“I don’t suppose…you can heal me,” he murmured, through the screams and chaos. “Sweet bright hells, this hurts.”

“I don’t know how,” I said, anxiously. “I still haven’t learned that. Ia’s coming, though—”

“No. He can only n-negate what I’ve done. I don’t want it negated.” Eino’s eyes fluttered shut; he’d begun shaking, his skin turning cool and clammy. “I will be…what I choose to be. If they cannot make a p-place for me, I will carve my own.”

I blinked. Oh.

Ia and Arolu reached us, Arolu’s eyes wide and white; at once he tore off one of his sleeves, twisted it, and then pushed Eino back so he could get his robes up. Someone was calling for a bonebender. Eino, however, had started to laugh through his shaking. He murmured something; I leaned close to hear it.

“I am a warrior,” he said, through gritted teeth, “and I will not fight fair.”

I sat up, staring down at him. Ia, standing at the edge of my vision, suddenly looked sharply at me.

Oh. I understood a new thing, all of a sudden:

Power is not a thing that can be given.

The men of Darr had tried to give up theirs, to prove their loyalty after their fellows’ betrayal, but they were still Darre. The Darre as a whole kept trying to let go of their warrior selves, but they couldn’t; it was what had made them strong for so long, and they knew it. Even Ia—he had chosen to live among the mortals because they did not fear him, but that did not make him anything less than he was: the greatest and most terrifying of the Three’s remaining children.

Everyone treated Eino like less than he was, but that did not make him so. Even when he tried to fit himself in with their thinking, when he let them use him, he was still not their thing. He was still himself: a great mortal temporarily folding himself small, choosing to bend and smile behind his sleeve and refrain from dancing in others’ presence. He might allow others to forget his worth, might have to remind them, might have to fight and bleed to make them recognize it—but as long as he remembered who and what he was, none of them could diminish him. He was, would forever be, glorious.

Oh!

And all he would ever have to do, to claim his true glorious self—

OH! OH! OH!

—was take his power back.

I lifted my hands without quite knowing why. Just felt right. I made cups of my hands. Something filled them now, brimming gold and bright-hot and strange. Where had it come from? Mostly Eino—but there was some of me in there, too, just a little, just enough. A spark of myself. Why had I added that to Eino’s shining power?

Because I had to. Because it was…it was why I was there! Why I was, at all.

All around us the mortal realm seemed to swirl, as if something had set it spinning around an axis that was us. But here, here which had become the center of all things, everything was suddenly still.

“Shill?” Ia’s voice was sharp.

“This is yours,” I whispered to Eino, who squinted up at me, panting. “You took it back from them.”

Eino looked utterly confused. “Mine? ”

I grinned. “Here!”

“Wha—” he began, before I plunged both hands up to the wrists into his body.

Into him! Into the he-that-was-Eino, not the flesh, not just the soul! Oh, there are no words for it, not even in my sophisticated big-girl vocabulary, but it was beautiful and perfect, all the whatness and howness of existence pouring through me, finding all the whoness and whyness of him and filling it up, blowing it open, setting us both on fire like baby stars! And I was all swirly, WE were swirly together, there is nothing to describe it except

YOU

ARE

And also, also:

I

AM

Because I am! Because THAT IS WHAT I AM!

Many things happened.

There was light like morning all around me. In the light, my hair lifted and whipped. I rose—no, I grew, limbs and face getting longer, breasts and hips becoming more than thoughts, hair stretching into a whipping banner. As I grew I pulled the shining, screaming thing that was Eino with me, dragging him by his soul; I was laughing. We were laughing, him through his screams and me through my tears, as all around us gathered a ring of power so vicious and intense that the Raringa’s floor peeled apart in splinters and rubble and its roof shattered and flew outward and most of the mortals screamed and fled.

And high above us the moon moved back into the place that it had held for eons, and the sun gasped and turned to see what was happening, and all the planets, everywhere, suddenly paid attention and got excited. All over existence I could feel all the incomprehensible members of my family perk up, or inhale, or sparkle, or ripple as they perceived the change.

It is the best feeling I have ever had. I wanted to share it! So I sent the light forth in spreading-ring wavelets, seeking, feeling, knowing:

A old woman in a place that does not revere old women the way the Darre do. She has nothing—no home, no family, no money, not even her full mind, but she has stood to scream at the cruel boys who’ve tried to take the little dog she loves, stood to fight them, because even she deserves to have something that loves her back—

Yes.

A young man who is smaller than he should be, visibly weaker; others have smelled his weakness. They hurt him, as they have done over and over, for no reason other than their own pleasure, but in this lone moment he is sick of it, he is done, and he balls his fists and launches himself at them even though he knows it is futile—

Yes, this one, too.

A child, a girl, the least-valued of her many siblings, the one who seems like nothing so her parents treat her like nothing, give her nothing that she does not take first, and she demands nothing except the one thing they owe her, which is that they look at her, look at her, LOOK AT ME RIGHT NOW—

Oh, yes, yes, yes!

And more, and more, new fires igniting as the wave of power circled the globe. Nothing special about any of them, nothing unique, just the right confluence of circumstance in the right moment of my maturation, and that was all it took. It hurt every time this happened, took that spark of me that seemed as necessary as their own strength—but I grew, too! Their power made me powerful even as I diminished. It was theirs! I was theirs! They took what they should always have had, and I made it real for them, made it right for me!

“Shill!” Ia came through the light and grabbed me flesh and soul; I laughed wildly, wanting him to laugh with me. “Look at what you’re doing to yourself! Stop this!” But I did not care about his concern. I wanted more: to be more, to give more. This was me, and I had found myself at last, and I would revel in it ’til I no longer could!

So Ia did the only thing possible: he surrounded me with the quintessence of himself so that the nothing of him clashed against the everything of me.

And then, only then, did I stop doing what I was doing—whatever that was—and settle back into myself.

I sagged to the floor, confused, because…because…what? I felt glorious. I also felt almost dead. This was a very strange combination of feelings.

“No, Shill.” Ia held me still, stroking my hair back from my face. “No. Make them earn what you can give them. Make sure they’re worthy, little Sibling.”

“Wh-what?” I couldn’t think. Why was Ia being so nice, all of a sudden? What had happened, exactly? I tried to sit up and could not. Ia helped me. I would think about that later, though, because suddenly there were more important mysteries to ponder.

Like: what had wrecked the Raringa? There was rubble everywhere around me, a burst pipe at the back of the room spraying a flood, fallen lanterns smoldering and and torn scrolls fluttering and broken record-spheres rolling about. Most of the people in the chamber were not hurt, for which I was relieved. But—suddenly I remembered what I had done, what I had been compelled to do to Eino, and I gasped, looking around for him. “Where—” Then I saw him, and my mouth fell open.

Because Eino floated unconscious at the center of the room in a slow-curling funnel of hair and robe. He glowed, blacklit and shivery—and all around him, swirling too in a delighted dance, were dozens of small colored balls. Some of them had clouds. As I watched, down through the hole in the Raringa’s ceiling came a tiny sun, which circled Eino once and then passed into Eino’s flesh, vanishing. I could feel other suns out there, queuing up to do the same thing: at least ten of them, happily giving themselves over to remake him into what they’d yearned for: a new god of mischief and troublemaking and stirring things up just for shits and giggles—or maybe because tradition had held sway for too long.

A new…trickster. The Trickster.

And elsewhere, everywhere around the mortal realm, all over this planet—there were others. One…two…six…a dozen…more. Newborn gods: mortals suddenly and shockingly turned immortal, all of them still forging the selves they would become, solidifying in power…but all of them made by me.

“Oh,” I said, blinking. “Whoops.”

It was Yeine, later when we had all gone back to Fahno’s house, who explained what had happened.

“It’s something I thought might take place eventually,” she said. She sat at the kitchen table; everyone in the house had gathered round in awe. Juem, with shaking hands, had offered her a roasted gran banana, and to everyone’s surprise she had grinned and enthusiastically accepted. It had been her favorite, apparently, when she was mortal.

She looked at me, where I sat across from her. My mortal shape was taller than hers now, all grown up, with nice strong arms and long fast legs and nice white teeth, which I used to grin back at her.

“I turn my back on you for three days, Shill.” She shook her head, amused and wry. “Well, that will teach me to assume I know what the universe needs. I thought it lacked…something. I thought that something might be what it had lost—and that was indeed the case.” She turned now to Eino.

Eino, who floated in the middle of the room, because he could not figure out how to make himself stand on the ground. Everyone was giving him a wide berth, and he looked distinctly worried, himself. Poor baby god! At least he’d finally figured out how to make the planets stop bothering him.

“Welcome to the family,” she said gently, and Eino flinched.

“Please,” he said, fidgeting; his robes kept swirling around him in an unfelt wind, and his hair kept getting into his face. “Please, great Lady of Twilight—”

“Yeine will do.”

He looked distinctly uncomfortable. I leaned over to whisper to Yeine, “Boys aren’t supposed to get familiar with strange women.” Then I winked at Arolu, so he would know I had listened to him. He groaned from where he sat, looking faint as he had all afternoon.

Yeine coughed, though I could tell she was really laughing. “Ah. Things have changed a bit since my day, I see; back then we couldn’t shut men up around strange women. But I think you’ll find, Eino mau Tehno, that the rules of mortality no longer apply to you now. Speak to whomever you like.”

He stared at her, and gradually began to sag toward the ground. “It’s true, then. I’m…this is…” He lifted his hands, stared at them. “I’m a godling.”

She regarded him for a long moment, thoughtful. I stared at him. “Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t believe he actually seemed upset about it. “You’re a godling, and now you’ll live forever, and you’ve got all kinds of magic! Now nobody can make you get married, or keep you from dancing. Now, if you wanted, you could make every man in Darr free, just like that!”

I snapped my fingers—or tried to. But as I lifted my hand, there was a terrible, vertiginous moment in which my stomach dropped and the room spun and I felt myself diminish. I shuddered and closed my eyes. Yeine, however, touched my hand, and a moment later I felt better. Not good. Just not awful anymore.

“No, he can’t,” she said, sternly. “Or rather, he can, but if he does so in your presence, he will harm you. Power cannot be given, Shill; isn’t that what you finally understood? People can only take it—and then only what is already theirs by right. Only what they can claim, and hold, with their own hands. Anything more is dangerous to them and others. Anything less, however…” She squeezed my hand, and I looked up to see her smile. “Well, that’s where you come in, my big girl. Nahadoth and Itempas will be so proud.”

I grinned back, dizzyingly happy. I was myself at last, which was all the Three had ever really wanted me to be.

“Every man in Darr has the right to be free,” Eino said. He was on his feet now. A persistent little moon orbited his head; he couldn’t seem to get rid of it. This in no way diminished the grave determination in his face.

“Not at the expense of Darr’s women,” said Mikna. He rounded on her, and she lifted her chin, even though he was a god now and she was just a mortal. I felt that this was very brave of her.

“…No,” he agreed after a moment, to her obvious surprise. “But our strength should not diminish yours. It makes us all powerful, together.” He inclined his head to her.

Mikna seemed to consider this, and then after a moment she nodded back in silent acknowledgement.

“Then tell everybody this,” I said. It seemed so obvious all of a sudden. “You see it now, Eino; help all of the Darre see it, too. Show them who they were, and who they could become!” Then I would grow as they grew, and everything would be better!

“And yet,” Ia said, dampening my glee, because Ia, “Shill has done precisely what she claims should not be done; she has given power beyond imagining to mortals who cannot possibly be ready for it.” He stood with his arms folded on the edge of the room, beyond the clustering of folk around Yeine. For the first time I realized how lonely he seemed, over there by himself.

“Yes.” Yeine grew grave as well. “A plethora of new gods who haven’t a clue of what they are, or why this has happened; there will be trouble from it, I am certain. From many quarters, since our family was not ready for so many new additions, so soon.” She sighed. “And yet it is something I expected, as I said. Just…not now.”

“Mortals becoming gods.” Fahno, at the table with us, rubbed her eyes. “You expected this, Lady? Before you, no one had ever done it. And the confluence of circumstances required to make it happen—”

“Established a precedent,” Yeine said. “Made a path. Opened a door. It is the nature of this universe that once a thing becomes possible, it will happen somewhere, for however brief a time. Life spawns from lifelessness, gods from godlings; why should there not be a bridge in between, from the mortal to the immortal?” She abruptly looked pleased. “A new cycle of life. Fascinating.”

Ia grimaced. Maybe he was not fascinated. “It almost killed her, though.” He was looking at me.

“True.” Yeine watched me as well. “And what that means is that you cannot just empower any mortal, Shill, nor can you do it frequently. Certain conditions and circumstances must obviously be met, first, to facilitate the change; what those are, you will have to discover. So from here on, do try to exercise some discretion, why don’t you?”

I inhaled, delighted, because this was part of me, too. “I’m going to get really good at it.” And as I got better—“Oh, wow. I’ll be strong, one day.”

“One day, yes.” Yeine looked thoughtful. “Mortal life has always been, well, mortal. This universe that Nahadoth and Itempas and I have built is not eternal. There may be others, but when this one ends, mortalkind ends with it. But perhaps it need not end with death.”

We all fell silent at that, in wonder, in fear. I couldn’t imagine such a time ever coming to pass. But I understood this instinctively: because I existed, the end of mortal life—the rebirth of mortal life, into immortality—was possible. And if it was possible…

“I’ll work to make that happen,” I said, and even just this thought made me feel happy and right and full of light again.

Then I thought of something and glanced at Ia, and bit my lip. “But, um, maybe you could help me, Sibling, until then? I mean—you stopped me, when I would’ve spun myself away to nothing.”

He drew back, with an offended air. “I’ve done enough babysitting, Shill, thank you.” And with that he vanished.

I slumped, disappointed. Yeine shook her head and got to her feet, then leaned down to murmur in my ear.

“How convenient that you’re not a baby anymore. Isn’t it?”

I blinked, and then a slow grin spread across my lips. She winked, and straightened again. Well, then.

I put my hands on the table and pushed to my feet. “OK,” I said. “There’s lots to do! You mortals have to fix all the stuff that’s wrong with your realm, if you’re going to make it to the end of the universe.” I waggled a finger at Mikna, who lifted an eyebrow skeptically. Then I pointed at Eino. “You! Come with me. We have to find the other babies, and make sure they do not wreck stuff.”

A pained look crossed his face; his little pet moon glowed white with amusement. “You barely know what you’re doing yourself, Shill.”

“That is beside the point! I know more than you do; that means it’s my job to teach.” I put my hands on my hips, pleased with this plan. “I can help them find their natures, too! That’s what I do now, see.”

“I’m not certain this is wise,” said Fahno; she had the same look on her face as Eino.

“Empowerment does not always wait for wisdom,” said Yeine, “though that will doubtless come with time in Shill’s case. Hopefully soon.”

“Yes, but will we survive until then?”

“Hey! I’m right here.” I shook my head, then went over to Eino. “OK. Calm down about being a god. You can still do mortal stuff if you want. Marry and make babies and lead revolutions all you want. Right?”

Eino blinked in surprise, then looked at Fahno, who stared back at him as well. He bit his lip and looked away for a moment. “Beba.”

Fahno took a deep breath and stood. “If you want nothing more to do with us, I will understand.”

He flinched. “No! I’m still Darre, Beba. I’m still clan.”

She hesitated, lowered her eyes. “You have a new clan now.”

He set his jaw. “I have an old clan.” He went over to her, took her hands. She squeezed his hands, her eyes overbright, and Arolu came over, too. Eino folded his arms round them both, shaking, and there were lots of tears and whispers of things that probably should have been said long before.

Quietly, beyond us all, I felt Yeine vanish, and knew why. Eino might be Darre now, but Fahno was right; his attachment to his mortal life would not last long. It was as Zhakkarn had said, and as Yeine had learned herself: they were too small, too ephemeral, to grasp the whole of what we were. In the end, we would always leave them behind.

But that would happen on its own, with Eino. I didn’t need to push. Let him make his own farewells to mortality; he had forever, after all. And after all, someday mortalkind would be better. I wouldn’t push them, either—but when they were ready, I would be there, waiting. I would help them all I could.

I won’t push any of you, see? I didn’t give you anything, and you don’t owe me anything. Your power is yours; it has always been there. I’m just going to help you reach it. What you do with it, from there on, is up to you.

Now come along, babies! Today I will teach you how not to smash planets by accident. Oh! And also: how to tell stories the Proper Way. You always have to finish with THE END, or Papa will give you such a look.

THE END.

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Meet the Author

N. K. Jemisin is a career counselor, political blogger, and would-be gourmand living in New York City. She’s been writing since the age of ten, although her early works will never see the light of day. Find out more about the author at nkjemisin.com.

Photo credit: N. K. Jemisin

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Also by N. K. Jemisin

THE INHERITANCE TRILOGY

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

The Broken Kingdoms

The Kingdom of Gods

The Awakened Kingdom (novella)

THE DREAMBLOOD DUOLOGY

The Killing Moon

The Shadowed Sun

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If you enjoyed

THE AWAKENED KINGDOM,

look out for

THE FIFTH SEASON

Book One of the Broken Earth

by N. K. Jemisin

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS. AGAIN.

Three terrible things happen in a single day.

Essun, masquerading as an ordinary schoolteacher in a quiet small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Mighty Sanze, the empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years, collapses as its greatest city is destroyed by a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heartland of the world’s sole continent, a great red rift is torn that spews enough ash to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

But this is the Stillness, a land long familiar with struggle, where orogenes—those who wield the power of the earth as a weapon—are feared far more than the long cold night. Essun has remembered herself, and she will have her daughter back. She does not care if the world falls apart around her. Essun will break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

The first novel in a new series by award-winning author N. K. Jemisin, where a mother struggles to find her daughter in a post-apocalyptic world.

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Chapter 1

The straw is so warm that Damaya doesn’t want to come out of it. Like a blanket, she thinks through the bleariness of half-sleep. Like the quilt her great-grandmother once sewed for her out of patches of uniform cloth. Years ago Muh Dear had worked for the Brevard militia as a seamstress, and got to keep the scraps from any repairs that required new cloth. The blanket she made for Damaya is mottled and dark, blue and green in rippling bands like columns of marching men, but it came from Muh Dear’s hands, so Damaya doesn’t care that it’s ugly. It smells sweet and gray and a bit fusty, so it is easy to imagine that the straw—which smells mildewy and like old manure with a hint of fruity, fungal sweetness—is Muh’s blanket. Even though the actual blanket is back in Damaya’s room, on the bed where she left it, and in which she will never sleep again.

She can hear voices outside the straw pile now: Mama and someone else talking as they draw closer. A rattle-creak as the barn door is unlocked, and they come inside; another rattle as the door shuts behind them. Then Mother raises her voice and calls, “DamaDama?”

Damaya curls up tighter, clenching her teeth. She hates that stupid nickname. She hates the way Mother says it, all light and sweet, like it’s actually a term of endearment and not a lie.

When Damaya doesn’t respond, Mother says: “She can’t have gotten out. My husband checked all the barn locks himself.”

“Nothing is secure for her kind.” This voice belongs to a man. Not her father or older brother, or the comm headman, or anyone she recognizes. This man’s voice is deep, and he speaks with an accent like none she’s ever heard: sharp and heavy, with long drawled o’s and a’s and crisp beginnings and ends to every word. Smart-sounding. Dangerous. He jingles faintly as he walks, so much that she wonders whether he’s wearing a big set of keys. Or perhaps he has a lot of money in his pockets? This thought makes Damaya curl in on herself, sick and trembling, because of course she’s heard the other children in creche whisper of child-markets in faraway cities of beveled stone. Not all places in the world are as civilized as the Nomidlats. She laughed off the whispers then, but everything is different now.

“Here,” says the man’s voice, not far off now. “Fresh spoor, I think.”

Mother makes a sound of disgust, and Damaya burns in shame as she realizes they’ve seen the corner she uses for a bathroom. It smells terrible there, even though she’s been throwing straw over it each time. “Squatting on the ground like an animal. I raised her better.”

“Is there a toilet here?” asks the child buyer, in a tone of polite curiosity. “Did you give her a bucket?”

Silence from Mother, which stretches on, and belatedly Damaya realizes the man has reprimanded Mother with those quiet questions. It isn’t the sort of reprimand Damaya is used to. The man hasn’t raised his voice or called anyone names. Yet Mother stands still and silenced as surely as if he’d followed the words with a smack to the head.

A giggle bubbles up in her throat, and at once she crams her fist into her mouth to stop it from spilling out. They’ll hear Damaya laugh at her mother’s embarrassment, and then the child buyer will know what a terrible child she really is. But is that such a bad thing? Maybe then her parents will get less for her. That alone almost makes her let the giggles loose—or screams so the buyer will think there’s something wrong with her—because Damaya hates her parents, she hates them, and anything that will make them suffer makes her feel better.

Then she bites down on her hand, hard, and hates herself, because of course they’re selling Damaya if she can think such thoughts.

Footsteps nearby. “Cold in here,” says the man.

“Not freezing,” says Mother, and Damaya almost giggles again at her sullen, defensive tone. Maybe the child buyer will smack Mother for giving him attitude.

But the child buyer ignores Mother. His footsteps come closer. Damaya can feel each step the way she feels everyone else’s steps, a beat against her eardrums with a faint echo that goes down into the barn’s dirt floor. She has always felt things in this two-layered way, and only lately has she come to understand what it means. His steps are heavier than most, though, echoing through the rock that lies a few feet below the soil, almost like he’s trying to make the earth shake. She’s never felt anyone whose steps go that deep.

And now he’s coming up the ladder, to the loft where she lies under the straw.

“Ah,” he says, reaching the top. “It’s warmer up here.”

“Dama!” Mother sounds furious now. “Get down here!”

Damaya scrunches herself up tighter under the straw and says nothing. The child buyer’s footsteps pace closer.

“You needn’t be afraid,” he says in that rolling voice. Closer. She feels the reverberation of his voice through the wood and down to the ground and into the rock and back again. Closer. “I’ve come to help you, Damaya Strongback.”

Another thing she hates, that he calls her by her use-name. She doesn’t have a strong back at all, and neither does Mother. All Strongback means is that some of her female ancestors were lucky enough to join a comm but too undistinguished to earn a more secure place within it. Strongbacks get dumped same as commless when times get hard, her brother Chaga has told her, to tease her. Especially if a comm has too much labor and not enough specialization, and especially during a Season. Of course, Chaga is a Resistant, like Father. All comms like to have them around no matter how hard the times, in case of sickness and famine and such.

The man’s footsteps stop just outside the straw pile. “You needn’t be afraid,” he says again, more softly now. Mother is still down on the ground level; she probably can’t hear him. “I won’t let your mother hurt you.”

Damaya inhales.

She’s not stupid. The man is a child buyer, and child buyers do terrible things. But because he has said these words, and because some part of Damaya is tired of being afraid and angry, she uncurls. She pushes her way through the soft warm pile and sits up, peering out at the man through loose strands of hair and dirty straw.

He is as strange-looking as he sounds, and not from anywhere near Palela. His skin is almost white, it’s so paper-pale; he must smoke and curl up in strong sunlight. He has long limp hair, which together with the skin might mark him as an Arctic, though the color of it—a deep heavy black, like the soil near an old blow—doesn’t fit. Damaya’s creche teacher says Arctics go in more for brown or orange or yellow hair. Eastern Coasters’ hair is black like that, and when it’s curly it’s the next best thing to ashblow hair, but people from the east have black skin. And he’s big, not small like Arctics are supposed to be—taller and with broader shoulders than Father. But where Father’s big shoulders join a big chest and a big belly, this man sort of tapers. Everything about the stranger seems lean and elongated. Nothing about him makes racial sense.

But what strikes Damaya most is the child buyer’s eyes. They’re white, or nearly so. She can see the whites of his eyes, and then a silvery-gray disk of color that she can barely distinguish from the white, even up close. The pupils of his eyes are wide in the barn’s dimness, and startling amid the desert of colorlessness.

She’s heard of eyes like these, which are called icewhite in stories and stonelore. They’re rare, and always an ill omen. But then the child buyer smiles at Damaya, and she doesn’t even think twice before she smiles back. She trusts him immediately. She knows she shouldn’t, but she does.

“And here we are,” he says, still speaking softly so that Mother won’t hear. “Damaya Strongback, I presume?”

“Dama,” she says, automatically. People she likes get to call her that. “Just once, not DamaDama. I hate that.”

He inclines his head gracefully, and extends a hand to her. “So noted. Will you join us, then, Dama?”

Damaya doesn’t move and he does not grab her. He just stays where he is, patient as stone, offering and not taking. Ten breaths pass. Twenty. Damaya knows she’ll have to go with him, but she likes that he makes it feel like a choice. So at last she takes his hand and lets him pull her up. He keeps her hand while she dusts off as much of the straw as she can, and then he tugs her closer, just a little. “One moment.”

“Hnh?” But the child buyer’s other hand is already behind her head, pressing two fingers into the base of her skull so quickly and deftly that she doesn’t startle. He shuts his eyes for a moment, shivers minutely, and then exhales, letting her go.

“Duty first,” he says, cryptically. She touches the back of her head, confused and still feeling the lingering sensation of his fingers’ pressure. “Now let’s head downstairs.”

“What did you do?”

“Just a little ritual of sorts. Come now; I need to tell your mother you’ll be leaving with me.”

So it really is true. Damaya bites her lip, and when the man turns to head back to the ladder, she follows a pace or two behind.

“Well, that’s that,” says the child buyer as they reach Mother on the ground floor. “If you could assemble a package for her—one or two changes of clothing, any travel food you can provide, a coat—we’ll be on our way.”

Mother stops glaring at Damaya, in surprise. “We gave away her coat.”

“Gave it away?” He speaks mildly, but Mother looks abruptly uncomfortable. “She’s got a cousin who needed it. We don’t all have wardrobes full of fancy clothes to spare. And—” Here Mother hesitates, glancing at Damaya. Damaya just looks away. She doesn’t want to see if Mother looks sorry for giving away the coat. She especially doesn’t want to see if Mother’s not sorry.

“And you’ve heard that orogenes don’t feel cold the way the rest of us do,” says the man, with a weary sigh. “That’s a myth. I assume you’ve seen your daughter take cold before.”

“Yes, but.” Mother catches Damaya looking back this time. Both of them flinch. “But I thought…”

That Damaya might be faking it. That was what she’d said to Damaya that first day, after they got home from creche and while they were setting her up in the barn. Mother had raged, her face streaked with tears, while Father just sat there, silent and grim. Damaya had hidden it from them, Mother said, hidden everything, pretended to be a child when she was really a monster, that was what monsters did, she had always known there was something wrong with Damaya, she had always been such a little liar—

The man shakes his head. “Nevertheless, she will need some protection against the cold. It will grow warmer as we approach the Equatorials, but we’ll be weeks on the road getting there.”

Mother’s jaw flexes. “So you’re really taking her to Yumenes, then.”

“Of course I—” And then the man stares at her. “Ah.” He glances at Damaya. They both look at Damaya, their gazes like an itch. She squirms. “And even thinking I was coming to kill your daughter, you had the comm headman summon me.”

Mother tenses. “Don’t. It wasn’t, I didn’t—” At her sides, her hands flex. Then she bows her head, as if she is ashamed, which Damaya knows is a lie. Mother isn’t ashamed of anything she’s done. If she were, why did she do it?

“Ordinary people can’t take care of…of children like her,” says Mother, very softly. Her eyes dart to Damaya’s, once, and away, fast. “She almost killed a boy at school. We’ve got another child, and neighbors, and…she’s dangerous. I have to think of what’s best for the whole family, the whole comm…” She trails off. Then abruptly she squares her shoulders, lifting her chin. “That’s any citizen’s duty, isn’t it?”

“Mmm. And the Empire thanks you for your sacrifice and service.” The words are praise. The tone is not. Damaya looks at the man again, confused now. Child buyers don’t kill children. And what’s this about going to the Equatorials? Those lands are far, far to the south.

Then the child buyer glances at Damaya and, somehow, understands that she does not understand. His face softens, which should be impossible with those frightening eyes of his.

“To Yumenes,” the man says to Mother, to Damaya. “Yes. She’s young enough, and therefore I’m taking her to the Fulcrum, where she will be trained to use her curse.”

Damaya stares back at him, realizing just how wrong she’s been. Mother has not sold Damaya. She and Father have given Damaya away. And Mother does not hate her; actually, she fears Damaya. Does that make a difference? Maybe. Damaya doesn’t know how to feel, in response to these revelations.

And the man, the man is not a child buyer at all. He is—

“You’re a Guardian?” she asks, even though by now she knows. He smiles again. She did not think Guardians were like this. In her head they are tall, cold-faced, bristling with weapons and secret knowledge. He’s tall, at least.

In most of the stories she’s been told, though, Guardians kill roggas like her.

“I am,” he says, and takes her hand. He likes to touch people a lot, she thinks. “I’m your Guardian.”

She frowns, but this is because she’s more confused than ever.

Mother sighs. “I can give you a blanket for her.”

“That will do, thank you.” And then the man falls silent, waiting. After a few breaths of this, Mother realizes he’s waiting for her. She nods jerkily, then leaves, her back stiff the whole way out of the barn. So then the man and Damaya are alone.

“Here,” he says, reaching up to his shoulders. He’s wearing something that must be a uniform: blocky shoulders and long stiff lines of sleeve and pant leg, burgundy cloth that looks sturdy but scratchy. Like Muh’s quilt. It has a short cape, more decorative than useful, but he pulls it off and wraps it around Damaya. It’s long enough to be a dress on her, and warm from his body.

“Thank you,” she says. “Who are you?”

“My name is Schaffa Guardian Warrant.”

She’s never heard of a place called Warrant, but it must exist, because what good is a comm name otherwise? “Guardian is a use-name?”

“It is for Guardians.” He drawls this, and her cheeks grow warm with embarrassment. “We aren’t much use to any comm, after all, in the ordinary course of things. It’s appropriate that we advertise this.”

Damaya frowns in confusion. “What, so they’ll kick you out when a Season comes? But…” Guardians are many things, she knows from the stories, but they are not unimportant. They must be strong to do what they do; they must be great warriors and hunters and sometimes—often—assassins. Comms need such people when hard times come.

Schaffa shrugs, moving away to sit on a bale of old hay. There’s another bale behind Damaya, but she keeps standing, because she likes being on the same level with him. Even sitting he’s taller, but at least not by so much.

“The orogenes of the Fulcrum serve the world,” he says. “You will have no use-name from here forth, because your usefulness lies in what you are, not merely some familial aptitude. From birth an orogene child can stop a shake; even without training, you are orogene. Within a comm or without one, you are orogene. With training, however, and with the guidance of other skilled orogenes at the Fulcrum, you can be useful not merely to a single comm, but the whole world.” He spreads his hands. “As a Guardian, via the orogenes in my care, I have taken on a similar purpose, with a similar breadth. It’s fitting that I share my charges’ possible fate.”

Damaya is so curious, so full of questions, that she doesn’t know which to ask first. “Do you have—” She stumbles over the concept, and the words, and the acceptance of herself. “Others, l-like me, I.” And she runs out of words.

Schaffa laughs, as if he senses her eagerness and it pleases him. “I am Guardian to six right now,” he says, inclining his head to let Damaya know that this is the right way to say it, to think it. “Including you.”

“And you brought them all to Yumenes? You found them all like this, like me—”

“Not exactly. The first three were given into my care when I became a Guardian. Later, when I had more experience, I was assigned to ride circuit in this part of the Nomidlats.” He spreads his hands. “When your parents reported their orogene child to Palela’s headman, he telegraphed word to Brevard, which sent it to Geddo, which sent it to Yumenes—and they in turn telegraphed word to me.” He sighs. “It’s only luck that I checked in at the node station near Brevard the day after the message arrived. Otherwise I wouldn’t have seen it for another two weeks.”

Damaya knows Brevard, though Yumenes is only legend to her, and the rest of the places Schaffa has mentioned are just words in a creche textbook. Brevard is the town closest to Palela, and it’s much bigger. It’s where Father and Chaga go to sell farmshares at the beginning of every growing season. Then she registers his words. Two more weeks in this barn, freezing and peeing in a corner. She’s glad he got the message in Brevard, too.

“You’re very lucky,” he says, perhaps reading her expression. His own has grown sober. “Not all parents do the right thing. Sometimes they don’t keep their child isolated as the Fulcrum and we Guardians recommend. Sometimes they do, but we get the message too late, and by the time a Guardian arrives a mob has carried the child off and beaten her to death. Don’t think too unkindly of your parents, Dama. You’re alive and well, and that is no small thing.”

Damaya squirms a little, unwilling to accept this. He sighs. “And sometimes,” he continues, “the parents of an orogene will try to hide the child. To keep her, untrained and without a Guardian. That always goes badly.”

This is the thing that’s been in her mind for the past two weeks, ever since that day at school. If her parents loved her, they would not have locked her in the barn. They would not have called this man. Mother would not have said those terrible things.

“Why can’t they—” she blurts, before she realizes he has said this on purpose. To see if Why can’t they just hide me and keep me here is something she’s been thinking—and now he knows the truth. Damaya’s hands clench on the cape where she’s holding it closed around herself, but Schaffa merely nods.

“First because they have another child, and anyone caught harboring an unregistered orogene is ejected from their comm as a minimum punishment.” Damaya has heard this, though she resents the knowledge. Parents who cared about her would risk, wouldn’t they? “Your parents could not have wanted to lose their home, their livelihood, and custody of both their children. But the greatest danger lies in what you are, Dama. You can no more hide that than you can the fact that you are female, or your clever young mind.” She blushes, unsure if this is praise. He smiles so she knows it is.

He continues: “Every time the earth moves, you will hear its call. In every moment of danger you will reach, instinctively, for the nearest source of warmth and movement. The ability to do this is to you as fists are to a strong man. It’s harder than you can imagine to not fight back, especially when the threat is imminent. Of course you’ll do what you must to protect yourself. And when you do, people will die.”

Damaya flinches. Schaffa smiles again, as kindly as always.

And Damaya thinks about that day.

It was after lunch, in the play-yard. She had eaten her bean roll while sitting by the pond with Limi and Shantare as she usually did while the other children played or threw food at each other. Some of the other kids were huddled in a corner of the yard, scratching in the dirt and muttering to each other; they had a geomesting test that afternoon. And then Zab had come over to the three of them, though he’d looked at Damaya in particular as he said, “Let me cheat off you.”

Limi giggled. She thought Zab liked Damaya. Damaya didn’t like him, though, because he was awful—always picking on Damaya, calling her names, poking her until she yelled at him to stop. So she said to Zab, “I’m not getting in trouble for you.”

And he’d said, “You won’t, if you do it right. Just move your paper over—”

“No,” she’d said again. “I’m not going to do it right. I’m not going to do it at all. Go away.” And then she’d turned back to Shantare, who had been talking before Zab interrupted.

Next thing Damaya knew, she was on the ground. Zab had shoved her off the rock using both hands, and she’d tumbled head over heels, literally, landing on her back. Later—she’d had two weeks in the barn to think about it—she would recall the look of shock on his face, as if he hadn’t realized she would go over so easily. But at the time, all she had known was that she was on the ground. The muddy ground. Her whole back was cold and wet and foul, everything smelled of fermenting bog and crushed grass, it was in her hair and that was her best uniform and Mother was going to be furious and she was furious and so she’d grabbed the air and—

Damaya shivers. People will die. Schaffa nods as if he has heard this thought.

“You’re firemountain-glass, Dama.” He says this very softly. “You’re a gift of the earth—but Father Earth hates us, never forget, and his gifts are neither free nor safe. If we pick you up, hone you to sharpness, treat you with the care and respect you deserve, then you become useful. More than useful: valuable. But if we just leave you lying about, you’ll cut to the bone the first person who blunders across you. Or worse—you’ll shatter, and hurt many.”

Damaya remembers the look on Zab’s face. The air had gone cold for only an instant, billowing around her like a burst balloon. That was enough to make a crust of ice on the grass beneath her, and to make the sweatdrops go solid on Zab’s skin. They’d stopped and jerked and stared at each other.

She remembers his face. You almost killed me, she had seen there.

Schaffa, watching her closely, smiles.

“It isn’t your fault,” he says. “Most of what they say about orogenes isn’t true. There’s nothing you did to be born like this, nothing your parents did. Don’t be angry with them, or with yourself.”

And she begins to cry. Because, well. He’s right. All of it, everything he says, it’s right. She has hated Mother for putting her in here, she’s hated Father and Chaga for letting Mother do it, she hates herself for having been born what she is and disappointing them all. And now Schaffa knows just how weak and terrible she is.

“Shh,” he says, standing and coming over to her. He kneels and takes her hands; she starts crying harder. She can’t hold it in anymore. But Schaffa squeezes her hands sharply, enough to hurt, and she starts and draws breath and blinks at him through the blur. “You mustn’t, little one. Your mother will return soon. Never cry where they can see you.”

“Wh-what?”

He looks so sad—for Damaya?—as he reaches up and cups her cheek. “It isn’t safe.”

So she stops, though she doesn’t really understand. Once she’s wiped her cheeks, he examines her and thumbs away a tear that she’s missed, then nods after this inspection. “Your mother will probably be able to tell, but that will do for everyone else.”

The barn door creaks and Mother is back, this time with Father in tow. Father’s jaw is tight, and he doesn’t look at Damaya even though he hasn’t seen her since Mother put her in the barn. Both of them focus on Schaffa, who stands and moves a little in front of Damaya, nodding thanks as he accepts the folded blanket and twine-wrapped parcel that Mother gives him.

“We’ve watered your horse,” Father says, stiffly. “You want provender to carry?”

“No need,” says Schaffa. “If we make good time, we should make Brevard just after nightfall.”

Father frowns. “A hard ride.”

“Yes. But in Brevard, no one from this village will get the fine idea to come seek us out along the road, and make their farewells to Damaya in a ruder fashion.” Schaffa smiles thinly.

It takes a moment for Damaya to understand, and then she realizes: people from Palela want to kill Damaya. But that’s wrong, isn’t it? They can’t really, can they? She thinks of all the people she knows. The teachers from creche. The other children. The old ladies at the wellhouse who used to be friends with Muh.

Father thinks of this, too, she can see that in his face, and he frowns and opens his mouth to say what she’s thinking: They wouldn’t do something like that. But he stops before the words leave his mouth. And he glances at Damaya, once and with his face full of anguish, before remembering to look away again.

“Here you are,” Schaffa says to Damaya, holding out the blanket. It’s Muh’s. She stares at it, then looks at Mother, but Mother won’t look back.

Damaya swallows back tears because it isn’t safe to cry. Even when she pulls off Schaffa’s cloak and he wraps the blanket around her instead, familiar-fusty and scratchy and perfect, she keeps her face completely still. Schaffa’s eyes flick to hers; he nods, just a little, in approval. Then he takes her hand and leads her toward the barn door.

Mother and Father follow, but they don’t say anything. Damaya doesn’t say anything. She does glance at the house once, catching a glimpse of someone through a gap in the curtains before they flick shut. Chaga, her big brother, who taught her how to read and how to ride a donkey and how to skip rocks on a pond. He doesn’t even wave good-bye…but maybe this is not because he hates her.

Then Schaffa is lifting Damaya onto a horse bigger than any she’s ever seen, a big glossy bay with a long neck, and then Schaffa’s in the saddle behind her, tucking the blanket around her legs and shoes so she won’t chafe or get chilblains, and then they are away.

“Don’t look back,” Schaffa advises. “It’s easier that way.” So she doesn’t.

But later, she wishes that she had.

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If you enjoyed

THE AWAKENED KINGDOM,

look out for

THE KILLING MOON

Book One of Dreamblood

by N. K. Jemisin

The city burned beneath the Dreaming Moon.

In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. Upon its rooftops and among the shadows of its cobbled streets wait the Gatherers—the keepers of this peace. Priests of the dream-goddess, their duty is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe…and kill those judged corrupt.

But when a conspiracy blooms within Gujaareh’s great temple, Ehiru—the most famous of the city’s Gatherers—must question everything he knows. Someone, or something, is murdering dreamers in the goddess’s name, stalking its prey both in Gujaareh’s alleys and the realm of dreams. Ehiru must now protect the woman he was sent to kill—or watch the city be devoured by war and forbidden magic.

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1

In the dark of dreams, a soul can die. The fears we confront in shadows are as reflections in glass. It is natural to strike a reflection that offends, but then the glass cuts; the soul bleeds. The Gatherer’s task is to save the soul, at any cost.

(Wisdom)

In the dark of waking, a soul has died. Its flesh, however, is still hungrily, savagely alive.

The Reaper’s task is not to save.

* * *

The barbarians of the north taught their children to fear the Dreaming Moon, claiming that it brought madness. This was a forgivable blasphemy. On some nights, the moon’s strange light bathed all Gujaareh in oily swirls of amethyst and aquamarine. It could make lowcaste hovels seem sturdy and fine; pathways of plain clay brick gleamed as if silvered. Within the moonlight’s strange shadows, a man might crouch on the shadowed ledge of a building and be only a faint etching against the marbled gray.

In this land, such a man would be a priest, intent upon the most sacred of his duties.

More than shadows aided this priest’s stealth. Long training softened his footfalls against the stone; his feet were bare in any case. He wore little altogether, trusting the darkness of his skin for camouflage as he crept along, guided by the sounds of the city. An infant’s cry from a tenement across the street; he took a step. Laughter from several floors below his ledge; he straightened as he reached the window that was his goal. A muffled cry and the sounds of a scuffle from an alley a block away; he paused, listening and frowning. But the disturbance ended as sandals pattered on the cobblestones, fading into the distance, and he relaxed. When the love-cries of the young couple next door floated past on a breeze, he slipped through the curtains into the room beyond.

The bedchamber: a study in worn elegance. The priest’s eyes made out graceful chairs upholstered in fraying fabrics, and wood furnishings gone dull for lack of polish. Reaching the bed, he took care to avoid shadowing the face of the person who slept there—but the old man’s eyes opened anyhow, blinking rheumily in the thin light.

“As I thought,” said the old man, whose name was Yeyezu. His hoarse voice grated against the silence. “Which one are you?”

“Ehiru,” said the priest. His voice was as soft and deep as the bedchamber’s shadows. “Named Nsha, in dreams.”

The old man’s eyes widened in surprise and pleasure. “So that is the rose’s soulname. To whom do I owe this honor?”

Ehiru let out a slow breath. It was always more difficult to bestow peace once a tithebearer had been awakened and frightened; that was why the law commanded Gatherers to enter dwellings in stealth. But Yeyezu was not afraid, Ehiru saw at once, so he chose to answer the old man’s question, though he preferred to do his work without conversation.

“Your eldest son submitted the commission on your behalf,” he said. From the hipstrap of his loinskirt he plucked free the jungissa: a thumb-long polished stone like dark glass, which had been carved into the likeness of a cicada. Yeyezu’s eyes tracked the jungissa as Ehiru raised it. The stones were legend for their rarity as well as their power, and few of Hananja’s faithful ever saw one. “It was considered and accepted by the Council of Paths, then given to me to carry out.”

The old man nodded, lifting a trembling hand toward the jungissa. Ehiru lowered the stone so that Yeyezu could run fingers over its slick, fine-carved wings, though he kept a good grip on its body. Jungissa were too sacred for carelessness. Yeyezu’s wonder made him look much younger; Ehiru could not help smiling at this.

“She has tasted many of your dreams, Yeyezu-Elder,” he said, very gently drawing the jungissa out of the old man’s reach so he would hear Ehiru’s words. Yeyezu sighed, but lowered his hand. “She has drunk deeply of your hopes and fears. Now She bids you join Her in Ina-Karekh. Will you grant Her this final offering?”

“Gladly,” Yeyezu said, and closed his eyes.

So Ehiru bent and kissed the old man’s forehead. Fevered skin, delicate as papyrus, smoothed under his lips. When he pulled away and set the jungissa in place of his kiss, the stone quivered at a flick of his fingernail and then settled into a barely-visible vibration. Yeyezu sagged into sleep, and Ehiru laid his fingertips on the old man’s eyelids to begin.

In the relative quiet of the city’s evening, the room sounded only of breath: first Ehiru’s and Yeyezu’s, then Ehiru’s alone. Amid the new silence—for the jungissa had stopped vibrating with the dream’s end—Ehiru stood for a few moments, letting the languor of the newly collected dreamblood spread within him. When he judged the moment right, he drew another ornament from his hip—this one a small hemisphere of obsidian whose flat face had been embossed with an oasis rose, the crevices tamped full of powdered ink. He pressed the carving carefully into the skin of Yeyezu’s bony, still chest, setting his signature upon the artwork of flesh. The smile that lingered on the elder’s cooling lips was even more beautiful.

“Dreams of joy always, my friend,” he whispered, before pulling away the sheet and arranging Yeyezu’s limbs into a peaceful, dignified position. Finally, as quietly as he’d entered, he left.

Now flight: along the rooftops of the city, swift and silent. A few blocks from Yeyezu’s house Ehiru stopped, dropping to the ground in the lee of an old broken wall. There he knelt amid the weeds and trembled. Once, as a younger man, he would have returned to the Hetawa after such a night’s work, overwhelmed with joy at the passing of a rich and full life. Only hours of prayer in the Hetawa’s Hall of Blessings could’ve restored his ability to function. He was no longer a young man. He was stronger now; he had learned discipline. Most nights he could perform a second Gathering, and occasionally a third if circumstances required—though three would leave him giddy and half a-dream, unsure of which realm he walked. Even a single soul’s dreamblood could still muddle his wits, for how could he not exult with Yeyezu’s happiness so palpable within him? Yet for the sake of other suffering citizens of Gujaareh, it was necessary to try. Twice he attempted to count by fours, a concentration exercise, but both times he failed at only four thousand and ninety-six. Pathetic. At last, however, his thoughts settled and the tremors ceased.

With some concern he saw that Dreaming Moon had reached zenith, her bright expanse glaring from the sky’s center like a great striped eye; the night was half over. Faster to cross this part of the city on the ground than by rooftop. After a moment’s pause to turn his loindrapes and don several gold ear-cuffs—for not even the poorest man in Gujaareh’s capital went without some ornamentation—Ehiru left the old wall and walked the streets as a man of no particular caste, nondescript in manner, taking care to slouch in order to lessen his stature. At such a late hour he saw only caravanners, making the final preparations for a journey on the morrow, and a yawning guardsman, doubtless headed for a night shift at one of the city gates. None of them noticed him.

The houses became less dense once he reached the highcaste district. He turned down a side street lit poorly with half-burned-out lanterns, and emerged amid a gaggle of young shunha men who reeked of a timbalin house and a woman’s stale perfume. They were laughing and staggering together, their wits slowed by the drug. He trailed in their wake for a block before they even marked his presence and then slipped aside, down another side street. This one led to the storage barn of the guesthouse he sought. The barn doors stood open, barrels of wine and twine-wrapped parcels in plain view along the walls—unmolested; Gujaareh’s few thieves knew better. Slipping into the shadows here, Ehiru removed his show-jewelry and turned his drapes once more, rolling and tying them so they would not flap. On one side, the drapes bore an unassuming pattern, but on the other—the side he wore now—they were completely black.

The day before, Ehiru had investigated the guesthouse. As shrewd as any merchant-casteman, the house’s proprietor kept his tower open year-round to cater to wealthy foreigners, many of whom disliked relocating during the spring floods. This tithebearer—a northern trader—had a private room in the tower, which was separated from the rest of the building by a flight of steep stairs. Convenient. Hananja made way when She wanted a thing done.

Within the house, the kitchen was dim, as was the serving chamber beyond. Ehiru moved past the table with its low cushions and through the house’s atrium garden, slowing as he turned aside fronds of palms and dangling ferns. Beyond the garden lay the sleeping chambers. Here he crept most stealthily of all, for even at such a late hour there could have been guests awake, but all of the rooms’ lanterns remained shuttered and he heard only slow, steady breathing from each curtained entrance. Good.

As he climbed the tower steps, Ehiru heard the trader’s unpeaceful snores even through the room’s heavy wooden door. Getting the door open without causing its hinges to creak took some doing, but he managed it while privately damning the outland custom of putting doors on inner chambers. Inside the room, the trader’s snores were so loud that the gauze curtains around his bed shivered in vibration. No wonder the proprietor had offered him the tower, and probably discounted the room. Still, Ehiru was cautious; he waited until a particularly harsh snort to part the curtains and gaze down at his next commission.

This close, the scent of the man mingled rancid sweat, stale grease, and other odors into a pungent mix that left Ehiru momentarily queasy. He had forgotten the infrequent bathing habits of people from the north. Though the night was cool and breezy, the northerner—a trader from the Bromarte people, the commission had specified, though in truth Ehiru had never been able to tell one northern tribe from another—sweated profusely, his pale skin flushed and rash-prickled as if he slept in high noon’s swelter. Ehiru studied that face for a moment, wondering what peace might be coaxed from the dreams of such a man.

There would be something, he decided at last, for Hananja would not have chosen him otherwise. The man was lucky. She did not often bestow Her blessings upon foreigners.

The Bromarte’s eyes already flickered beneath their lids; no jungissa was necessary to send him into the proper state of sleep. Laying fingers on the man’s eyelids, Ehiru willed his own soul to part from flesh, leaving its connection—the umblikeh—tethered in place so that he could follow it back when the time came. The bedchamber had become a shadow-place, colorless and insubstantial, when Ehiru opened his soul’s eyes. A reflection of the waking realm, unimportant. Only one thing had meaning in this halfway place between waking and dreaming: the delicate, shimmering red tether that emerged from somewhere near the Bromarte’s collarbones and trailed away into nothingness. This was the path the man’s soul had taken on its journey to Ina-Karekh, the land of dreams. It was a simple matter for Ehiru to follow the same path out and then in again.

When he opened his soul’s eyes this time, color and vast strangeness surrounded him, for he was in Ina-Karekh, the land of dreams. And here the dream of the Bromarte revealed itself. Charleron of Wenkinsclan, came the name to Ehiru’s consciousness, and he absorbed the name’s foreignness and as much as he could of the person who bore it. Not a soulname, but that was to be expected. Bromarte parents named their children for the hopes and needs of the waking world, not protection in sleep. By the reckoning of this Charleron’s people, his was a name of ambition. A name of hunger. And hunger was what filled the Bromarte’s soul: hunger for wealth, for respect, for things he himself could not name. Reflected in the dreamscapes of Ina-Karekh, these hungers had coalesced into a great yawning pit in the earth, its walls lined with countless disembodied, groping hands. Assuming his usual dreamform, Ehiru floated down through the hands and ignored their silent, scrabbling, blind need as he searched.

And there, at the bottom of the well of hands, weeping with fear and helplessness, knelt the manifestation of the unfortunately named Bromarte man. Charleron cringed between sobs, trying and failing to twist away from his own creations as the hands plucked at him again and again. They did him no harm and would have been only moderately frightening to any properly trained dreamer—but this was nevertheless the bile of dreams, Ehiru judged: black and bitter, necessary for health but unpleasant to the senses. He absorbed as much of it as he could for the Sharers, for there was much of use in dreambile even if Charleron might not agree. But he reserved space within himself for the most important humor, which after all was why he had come.

And as they always did, as the Goddess had decreed they must, the bearer of Hananja’s tithe looked up and saw Ehiru in his true, unadulterated shape.

“Who are you?” the Bromarte demanded, distracted momentarily from his terror. A hand grabbed his shoulder and he gasped and flinched away.

“Ehiru,” he said. He considered giving the man his soulname and then decided against it. Soulnames meant nothing to heathens. But to his surprise, the Bromarte’s eyes widened as if in recognition.

“Gualoh,” the Bromarte said, and through the filter of their shared dream, a whiff of meaning came to Ehiru. Some kind of frightening creature from their nightfire tales? He dismissed it: barbarian superstition.

“A servant of the Goddess of Dreams,” Ehiru corrected, crouching before the man. Hands plucked nervously at his skin and loincloth and the twin braids that dangled from his nape, responding to the Bromarte’s fear of him. He paid them no heed. “You have been chosen for Her. Come, and I will shepherd you to a better place than this, where you may live out eternity in peace.” He extended his hand.

The Bromarte leaped at him.

The movement caught Ehiru by such surprise that he almost failed to react in time—but no common man could best a Gatherer in dreaming. With a flick of his will, Ehiru banished the well of hands and replaced it with an innocuous desert of wind-waved dunes. This afforded him plenty of room to sidestep the Bromarte’s headlong rush. The Bromarte ran at him again, roaring obscenities; Ehiru opened and then closed the ground beneath the Bromarte’s feet, dropping him to the waist in sand.

Even thus pinned, the Bromarte cursed and flailed and wept, grabbing handfuls of the sand to fling at him—which Ehiru simply willed away. Then, frowning in puzzlement, he crouched to peer into the Bromarte’s face.

“It’s pointless to fight,” he said, and the Bromarte flinched into stillness at the sound of his voice, though Ehiru had kept his tone gentle. “Relax, and the journey will go soft.” Surely the Bromarte knew this? His people had been trading goods and seed with Gujaareh for centuries. In case that was the source of the Bromarte’s panic, Ehiru added, “There will be no pain.”

“Get away from me, gualoh! I’m not one of you mud-grubbers; I don’t need you feeding on my dreams!”

“It is true that you aren’t Gujaareen,” Ehiru replied. Without taking his attention from the man, he began adjusting the dreamscape to elicit calm. The clouds overhead became wispy and gentle, and he made the sand around the Bromarte’s dreamform finer, pleasant against the skin. “But foreigners have been Gathered before. The warning is given to all who choose to live and do business within our capital’s walls: Hananja’s city obeys Hananja’s Law.”

Something of Ehiru’s words finally seemed to penetrate the Bromarte’s panic. His bottom lip quivered. “I, I don’t want to die.” He was actually weeping, his shoulders heaving, so much that Ehiru could not help pitying him. It was terrible that the northerners had no narcomancy. They were helpless in dreaming, at the mercy of their nightmares, and none of them had any training in the sublimation of fear. How many had been lost to the shadowlands because of it? They had no Gatherers, either, to ease the way.

“Few people desire death,” Ehiru agreed. He reached out to stroke the man’s forehead, brushing thin hair aside, to reassure him. “Even my countrymen, who claim to love Hananja, sometimes fight their fate. But it’s the nature of the world that some must die so that others may live. You will die—early and unpleasantly if the whore’s disease you brought to Gujaareh runs its course. And in that time you might not only suffer, but spread your suffering to others. Why not die in peace and spread life instead?”

“Liar.” Suddenly the Bromarte’s face was piggish, his small eyes glittering with hate. The change came so abruptly that Ehiru faltered to silence, startled. “You call it a blessing of your Goddess, but I know what it really is.” He leaned forward; his breath had gone foul. “It gives you pleasure.”

Ehiru drew back from that breath, and the fouler words. Above their heads, the wispy clouds stopped drifting. “No Gatherer kills for pleasure.”

“ ‘No Gatherer kills for pleasure.’ ” The Bromarte drawled the words, mocking. “And what of those who do, Gatherer?” The Bromarte grinned, his teeth gleaming momentarily sharp. “Are they Gatherers no longer? There’s another name for those, yes? Is that how you tell your lie?”

Coldness passed through Ehiru; close on its heels came angry heat. “This is obscenity,” he snapped, “and I will hear no more of it.”

“Gatherers comfort the dying, yes?”

“Gatherers comfort those who believe in peace, and welcome Hananja’s blessing,” Ehiru snapped. “Gatherers can do little for unbelievers who mock Her comfort.” He got to his feet and scowled to himself in annoyance. The man’s nonsense had distracted him; the sand rippled and bubbled around them, heaving like the breath of a living thing. But before he could resume control of the dream and force the Bromarte’s mind to settle, a hand grasped his ankle. Startled, he looked down.

“They’re using you,” said the Bromarte.

Alarm stilled Ehiru’s mind. “What?”

The Bromarte nodded. His eyes were gentler now, his expression almost kind. As pitying as Ehiru himself had been, a moment before. “You will know. Soon. They’ll use you to nothing, and there will be no one to comfort you in the end, Gatherer.” He laughed and the landscape heaved around them, laughing with him. “Such a shame, Nsha Ehiru. Such a shame!”

Gooseflesh tightened Ehiru’s skin, though the skin was not real. The mind did what was necessary to protect the soul at such times, and Ehiru suddenly felt great need of protection—for the Bromarte knew his soulname, though he had not given it.

He jerked away from the man’s grip and pulled out of his dream in the same reflexive rush. But to Ehiru’s horror, the clumsy exit tore free the tether that bound the Bromarte to his flesh. Too soon! He had not moved the Bromarte to a safer place within the realm of dreams. And now the soul fluttered along in his wake like flotsam, twisting and fragmenting no matter how he tried to push it back toward Ina-Karekh. He collected the spilled dreamblood out of desperation but shuddered as it came into him sluggishly, clotted with fear and malice. In the dark between worlds, the Bromarte’s last laugh faded into silence.

Ehiru returned to himself with a gasp, and looked down. His gorge rose so powerfully that he stumbled away from the bed, leaning against the windowsill and sucking quick shallow breaths to keep from vomiting.

“Holiest mistress of comfort and peace…” He whispered the prayer in Sua out of habit, closing his eyes and still seeing the Bromarte’s dead face: eyes wide and bulging, mouth open, teeth bared in a hideous rictus. What had he done? O Hananja, forgive me for profaning Your rite.

He would leave no rose-signature behind this time. The final dream was never supposed to go so wrong—certainly not under the supervision of a Gatherer of his experience. He shuddered as he recalled the reek of the Bromarte’s breath, like that of something already rotted. Yet how much fouler had it been for the Bromarte, who had now been hurled through Ehiru’s carelessness into the nightmare hollows of Ina-Karekh for all eternity? And that only if enough of his soul had been left intact to return.

Yet even as disgust gave way to grief, and even as Ehiru bowed beneath the weight of both, intuition sounded a faint warning in his mind.

He looked up. Beyond the window rose the rooftops of the city, and beyond those the glowing curve of the Dreamer sank steadily toward the horizon. Waking Moon peeked round its larger curve. The city had grown still in the last moments of Moonlight; even the thieves and lovers slept. All except himself—

—And a silhouette, hunched against the cistern on a nearby rooftop.

Ehiru frowned and pushed himself upright.

The figure straightened as he did, mirroring his movement. Ehiru could make out no details aside from shape: male, naked or nearly so, tall and yet oddly stooped in posture. Indeterminate features and caste, indeterminate intent.

No. That much, at least, was discernible. Ehiru could glean little else from the figure’s stillness, but malevolence whispered clearly in the wind between them.

The tableau lasted only a moment. Then the figure turned, climbed the cistern’s rope to its roof, and leaped onto an adjoining building and out of sight. The night became still once more. But not peaceful.

Gualoh, echoed the Bromarte’s voice in Ehiru’s memory. Not an insult, he realized, staring at where the figure had been. A warning.

Demon.

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About Orbit Short Fiction

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Contents

1. Cover

2. Title Page

3. Welcome

4. The Awakened Kingdom

5. Meet the Author

6. Also by N. K. Jemisin

7. A Preview of The Fifth Season

8. A Preview of The Killing Moon

9. About Orbit Short Fiction

10. Orbit Newsletter

11. Copyright

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Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by N. K. Jemisin

Excerpt from The Fifth Season copyright © 2014 by N. K. Jemisin

Excerpt from The Killing Moon copyright © 2012 by N. K. Jemisin

Cover design by Lauren Panepinto

Cover copyright © 2014 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

First ebook edition: December 2014

ISBN 978-0-316-25905-7

E3

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