IX
Parchment, Ink, Cloves
MATILDA Shale’s grip on me loosened before I was ready.
I found myself falling, arms cutting through the wind, desperate to find purchase. But I had no wings, and there was nothing to cling to as the world became sharply defined again. My hair tangled over my face; my knees hit the ground with a jar, and I had a decidedly mortal moment: dizzy, I heaved onto the grass.
“I thought I told you not to bring urchin vassals to my threshold,” a woman’s voice, clear as a bell and edged like glass, drawled in the distance.
“Especially sick ones.”
“This, my beloved Fate, is no urchin vassal,” replied Shale. “You have
yet to fully look upon her.”
“And why would I?”
“I think you will find something quite … unexpected.”
There was a lull. I was unfortunately still dry heaving. My skin was covered in gooseflesh from traveling with the wind, my bones humming from flight. But when I quieted, eyes dripping with tears, mouth tasting like sweet rot, I realized that someone had come to stand before me in the long grass.
She had intriguing feet. They were long, bony, blue-tinged, and clawed, as if she were both goddess and beast.
A shiver danced down my spine. My fingers dug deep into the soil; I dared not glance up. Not without her invitation. But slowly, the ringing in
my ears faded, and I was able to take in my surroundings through my periphery.
We were in an orchard. Pomegranates and plums dappled the grass around us, as if they had just fallen from their branches. In the distance, a villa with white columns and a cloud for a roof shone resplendent on a hill, stained in colors of sunset. Somewhere to my right, I could hear the droning of bees, and I knew the apiary was close by. I could smell wildflower honey, mingling with the sighs that Shale spun through Fate’s orchard.
“Look up,” Rowena commanded me.
I swallowed and lifted my chin, hair falling away from my face.
The goddess of fate was a slip of a crone with stooped shoulders, grooves on her face, and gnarled fingers. Her long wispy hair was the color of snowfall. On first appearance, it would seem as if she were as old as the world, emerging from an era we could only dream of. Yet her eyes seemed familiar to me. They were just like her sister’s. Pale blue and milky, as if she saw all the threads of life, all the binding knots and patterns we could feel but could not see.
I held her gaze, my pulse thick in my throat.
And I watched surprise ripple through her, like the shock of metal after wool. I wondered if she could see a shade of my father within me. I was desperate to know, and far too intimidated to ask.
“I have woven her threads wrong on the loom,” Rowena said, scowl deepening. “Damn Orphia, for fooling me on this one. And damn Th—”
“You do not know if your weaving is wrong,” Shale interrupted. “This goddess is still a child. Perhaps you are the one who is right.”
Rowena was too upset to reply. She turned and began to stride to her
villa, agile for her age.
Bewildered, I looked to Shale.
“Should I follow her?” I asked.
He shrugged, offering me no help.
“You must learn the trade winds, god-child,” he said instead, beginning to fade into a gale. “You may ride them according to their schedule, east to west or west to east. They can carry you back to the mortal realm, as well as
bring you above again, so long as you know which Skyward threshold you seek to arrive at.”
With that, he was gone, melting into a wind that rattled the trees.
Fruit rained down on me.
I rose stiffly, regarding the distant marble stairs that led up to Fate’s villa. I still had a letter to deliver, and I hoped that whatever Rowena had seen in my face was enough to stay her hand from murdering me when I followed her.
I walked the path through the orchard, reaching the bottom step. There I paused, stricken by uncertainty. It was in this moment that I felt the trade wind Shale had spoken of; it blew cold from the east, inspiring another shudder in the fruit trees. Then the landscape fell silent, expectant, and I saw that a god had arrived exactly in the same place Shale had deposited me. Rowena’s threshold for visitors, I soon learned, as she liked to make them walk the orchard first.
My eyes narrowed as I watched this new visitor stride through the grass, kicking fallen fruit out of his way with sandaled feet. The sun spangled his long ashen hair and moss-green robes. His arms were bare, corded with muscle and tanned from days lounging in the sun. His face was perfectly symmetrical with elegant dark brows, high cheekbones, a lean nose, a pouty mouth.
When he stepped into the clearing—he had yet to glance up and notice me—I was struck by his beauty. It rooted me to the step. It made me forget my mission, drowning out my inner voice, which was begging me, Hide … do not let him see you.
I drew a sharp breath. I could taste a hint of his magic—rainfall, crushed lilies, damp warm soil, pollen on rose petals.
He glanced up, sensing my stare. His bright blue eyes locked with mine and he halted abruptly. It was impossible for me to tell his age—he exuded the radiance and vigor of a younger god—but even then, he was far older than me. I only surmised this because he was confident, regaining his composure before I did.
He approached, sandals clicking on the marble as he stood on the same stair as I did. It was only then, when I had his undivided attention, when he
loomed over me, blotting out the setting sun and the winking stars, when I could see the amber flecks in his eyes and feel the warmth of his presence, that I sensed my peril.
“And who,” he said in a melodic tenor, “might you be, little goddess?”
“Who says that I am a goddess?” I countered.
My question made his eyes break from mine, perusing me in slow, attentive strokes. His attention snagged on my belt, and I held my breath, hoping he would not see what Rowena had found in me. The features of my nameless father.
“I say that you are divine,” he eventually said. “Do you want to know
why?”
“Why?”
“Because I can smell your essence, and it is one that I have never encountered before.” He leaned closer, drawing a deep inhale. “You are parchment, ink, cloves. You are water dripping down stone, and the smoke of a burning scroll. You are something deeper, darker still. Something I am not sure how to describe, which means you came from the realm far below.
The only place I have never been.”
He leaned away. His smile was wide, exposing a row of perfectly set teeth.
“I will ask you again, Underling goddess,” he said, lower this time, as if we were exchanging secrets. “Tell me your name and your magic, and I will tell you mine.”
“You are the god of spring,” I said. “I can smell your essence just as vividly.”
My response shocked him. He merely stared down at me, jaw clenched, and I knew that I had spoken right. And that could be a dangerous thing in the presence of a proud divine.
This was the god who chased away my mother’s winter powers every year. Whom she had no choice but to bow and surrender to, letting him melt the ice, the snow, the bitter gray sky, the cold ground.
“And your name is Warin,” I added, remembering all the times I had heard Zenia curse him when winter ended. When she sprawled on her bed, weakened, and I savored the warm effervescent water in the rill.
“You are a sharp tool, aren’t you?” he said. “Is that why the Underling denizens have kept you hidden from us?”
He reached out to trace my cheek with his knuckles. I stiffened. A warning rang through me, and I took a step back before he could touch me.
Warin frowned. “I have no desire to hurt you. You are but a child, I see, and quite rough around the edges. Although I expect nothing less from the Underlings. And yet you are here in our realm now, a mystery in flesh, and I must wonder why. Who brought you? What is your name?”
“Warin.”
Rowena’s voice pierced the air, drawing our attention. She stood on the top stair, glowering down at us.
“Leave the child alone, and be gone,” she said with a wave of her hand.
“Have you forgotten our meetings?” Warin asked, petulant. “You canceled the last one, and the one before that. Please, Matriarch, I need your wisdom.”
“I am preoccupied, and I have a guest. One who arrived before you, so you need to leave.”
“And who, pray tell, is this guest?” Warin asked, looking at me again.
“Keep her presence here a secret, and I will meet with you tomorrow,”
Rowena said. “But if I hear mention of her in court, I will know it was you, and I will break your bones and drink your marrow. Do you understand me?”
Warin was quiet for a beat, as if the need to gossip at court was burgeoning in his chest. But an appointment with Fate eventually weighed more on the scales.
“I understand,” he said to Rowena, bowing to her. And then quieter, although just as sharply, he said to me, “Until I see you again.”
I watched him retreat down the same path he had first taken, through the orchard’s shadows and shed fruit to the threshold in the grass. He stood there a few moments, his back angled to us, until the eastern trade wind arrived. Then he vanished, like a wink of the eye.
This form of travel fascinated me as much as it unnerved me. I felt the lack of my knowledge like gaps between teeth, and I was thinking of how I might ride the winds alone when I heard Rowena clear her throat.
“Why have you come here, child?”
I gazed at her, my mind spinning when I thought back on my reason for
coming. Adria. Bade. Death’s letter.
“I have a message,” I replied.
“Speak up. I cannot hear you.” With that, she turned and vanished back into her villa.
I took that as an official invitation to join her, and I hurried up the length of stairs.
At the top, I stood between two pillars, soaking up my surroundings.
Rowena’s villa was open and airy. There were no walls, but white drapes fluttered between columns, and the floor was smooth marble. Wildflowers bloomed from small cracks, and ivy was growing up a rugged wooden table set with pots and jars and a bowl brimming with honey, glistening on the comb. The vines then encircled a round feather bed, as well as a small prayer brazier, whose embers flared red.
Mortals bury their prayers to Underling gods, but they burn them for Skywards.
I would have spent more time studying this fascinating brazier, keen to learn how prayers arrived through it, but Rowena pulled my focus to the far side of the villa, where she sat weaving on a loom. The sight made my heart pause, as if I had been here before, long ago. As if I were remembering something I had forgotten.
I walked closer and then understood my reaction: It was a twin to the loom Orphia tended in the under realm. A loom with a never-ending tapestry spilling from its clutches.
“You and your sister have the same loom?” I asked, forgetting my fear.
“Yes,” Rowena said, but her eyes were riveted to her work. A pattern that I could not see. “This is how we speak to each other these days. What I weave, she undoes. And all her warps and wefts? I pick them apart. We strive to outdo the other by making patterns that cannot be unraveled.”
“That sounds like a difficult way to make progress on a tapestry.”
“Life is difficult, is it not? The threads reflect it.”
I was quiet, remembering the words she had spoken over me in the orchard. I have woven her threads wrong on the loom.
“Will you undo the pattern Orphia has woven for me?” I said in a wavering tone.
“No, child. It is too late for that. I must now look ahead when it comes to your threads.” Rowena frowned at the tapestry, tapping her lip with one long fingernail. “I saw you born as a herald, but I failed to see you as half- Skyward. It was my mistake, my oversight. For that, your fate is now cloudy to me, save for one thing.”
I waited, but she did not offer what this one thing was.
Before I could ask, a small white owl flew into the villa, coming to rest on a perch beside Rowena’s shoulder. The bird stared at me with large golden eyes, and I shivered, realizing this was one of her pets. Fate’s owls could discern the design she—as well as Orphia—wove on their shared loom. The birds would then fly to the mortal realm, exposing our life stories in dreams to writers, bards, and poets, such as Adria. That was how our divine myths were translated to humankind. That was also how our stories become twisted. Sometimes humans embellished or changed them.
“I assume your owls have not shared anything about me to mortals?” I said.
“You can answer that yourself. Do mortals know of you? Pray to you?
Sing of you?”
No, I was quick to think, but then I remembered Vincent, and my breath caught. He had been dreaming of me for seasons now. Our fates must be entwined on the loom, even if Rowena would not confess it to me, and I imagined one of her owls had seen such and decided to meddle with Vincent’s dreams.
I stared at the bird, but she turned her attention away, watching Fate continue to weave.
“Now, then.” Rowena set down her shuttle, glaring at me. “What is this message you have for me?”
I hated how I trembled. I hated how I felt small and uncertain, withdrawing Orphia’s letter from my belt.
“A request,” I said, holding the parchment out to her. “From your sister.”
Rowena froze, staring at the letter. I thought she might refuse it, and prepared myself to persuade her, when she surprised me.
“I knew this was coming,” she said softly, more to herself than to me.
She walked around the loom, her clawed feet clacking on the floor. “I could see it in the threads, and yet … I thought it would come much later.”
Did she speak of Adria’s ascension as goddess? Bade’s disgrace?
It gave me hope, and I watched as she opened the letter, reading it with an inscrutable expression. And then the strangest thing occurred: Rowena threw back her head and laughed, and it was a cawing, contagious sound.
“How odd is this,” she said, her voice turning smoky. “How delicious. I will not be outdone, sister.”
“Then … you will grant four of your stars to make Adria’s constellation?” I whispered. It suddenly hurt to speak.
Rowena seemed not to hear. She strode to her table, shooing a host of butterflies away to reveal a stack of parchment, an inkstand, a white- feathered quill. But she did not write a message in reply, as I was expecting.
She took a paring knife sheathed on her leather belt and cut her palm. With her ichor, she drew a five-studded constellation on the parchment.
“Deliver this to Adria,” Rowena said, handing the sheet to me. At once, my magic began to pull me to the Poet Queen. A warm firelit room, the smell of oiled leather, the distant clink of a forge.
She was in Bade’s burrow.
I took the parchment, shining with golden stars, and carefully stored it in my pocket. “What am I supposed to do after it is delivered?”
“Orphia will know. She is with Adria, waiting for you to arrive. Now go.
Take the western trade wind back to the mortal realm. Should you ride the eastern one, you’ll be delayed, arriving at the Skyward hall instead. And I think you should avoid that for now.”
I nodded and hurried to the stairs, my pulse quickening, when she stopped me.
“Herald?” Rowena called. “What sort of goddess is made when Fate and Death come together in unison after centuries of enmity and strife?”
I paused, far too anxious to play a guessing game.
“I do not know, Matriarch,” I said. “Tell me.”
Rowena smiled, revealing sharp, crooked teeth. “We create a goddess of peace.”