Corbin Rafferty wandered through the shadows of his mind, down empty streets beneath the bloody blasted sky. He walked the road’s centerline, following moonsong.
Umar trailed him. He was shadow, presence, weight. Corbin did not need to look back anymore. He knew his role.
Near sunset he found himself home, at the apartment he shared with the girls. Lacking a key, he climbed the fire escape outside and pounded on the living room window—would have broken in, but the place was empty. The apartment looked as he left it the night he fell, the night the moon overwhelmed him. The girls had been gone for a long time.
Where?
The song bore him south to Market Square. He had expected the market to stand empty as the rest of the city, and was surprised to find a crowd. The stalls were closed, more than closed, they’d been cleared, pushed back to make room for an audience, hundreds of them, a thousand, even, on blankets and towels, on the filthy cobblestones Ray Capistano had wet with blood each morning for twenty years.
This was wrong. They should not be here. Something had broken his market. He knew its smells of trade and need. No one should sit rapt in this square. Who had done this? Who had stolen his place from him?
He knew. He heard. He smelled the stench of silver.
She was here.
She had convinced all these fools, seduced them with false comfort. But desperation tainted the silver stench. She needed these people to believe her lies. He could show them. This was his revenge.
He ran into the square and followed the gaze of these assembled sheep to the Crier’s dais, where, haloed with moonlight, his daughter stood.
“Ellen!” he roared, and ran to her.
* * *
Raz watched the war in heaven from his rooftop.
He saw more than a human could; he sensed the forces that warped the world above. But he ignored them and watched Cat fight.
She was more than fast: she was the only Blacksuit comfortable in the air. Some of the others spread wings, but none could stay aloft for long. They leapt, instead, and bounced off shields, or caught in webs of light. Their Suits turned against them. Broad-winged skeletal bats flew from the Craftswoman’s briefcase to tangle Blacksuits in thickets of bone.
Cat wrestled a creature made from broken glass. When the Craftswoman hit her, she bled silver.
Raz walked the blood jade down his fingers, and up again. There was a song inside it. He felt its hunger, bigger, older, deeper than his own.
He wanted it. He watched her.
When?
* * *
Tara walked the moon road.
Tara walked with/was the goddess/moon walking herself.
Space did not exist out here, so how could there be time? How could one being endure separate from others? In this realm stories told each other, tales tangled in tales. On the mountain there was a monastery and within the monastery was a young monk and an old, and the young monk asked the old, master tell me a story, and the master said, on the mountain—
She was is will be
moon mother tiger stone water woman wolf tooth sickle claw winter
human goddess more
falling, fallen.
The goddess tumbles to the desert floor, the goddess lies broken and bleeding in her many parts, and if she is always everywhere then she is always here, she is always dying, always the Craftsmen’s hands are inside her pulling out gobs of flesh, seizing her parts to force her story to their service. Her wings are flayed and she burns and—
—something is wrong—
Tara, for Tara was still, is still, here, felt terror larger, older than herself.
The goddess strained. She had built a hidden redoubt, a community of faith formed into a pocket through which Tara might pass and remain intact, but that pocket was in danger—
The moon that is a mirror of itself cracked and monks and mountains and sitters and spinners scattered all askew—
* * *
Matt didn’t recognize the ragged man as Corbin Rafferty until he spoke, until he shouted Ellen’s name over the silent market. His hair was matted, his beard tangled, but he pointed toward her, accusing. “Ellen, get down from there, what the hells are you doing?” and spinning to see the crowd, “What the hells are you all doing? Don’t you see what’s happening up there? We have to get safe.”
Ellen was afraid, and the crowd shook. Whatever was happening here, with the goddess, Matt was only on its edge, but Ellen stood at its center, and as she came apart so did the web she’d knit from these people—like a whirlpool in a sink stopped when you replaced the plug.
He ran to Rafferty. “Corbin, stop it. You don’t know what’s happening. Calm down.”
The eyes that stared up into his were sharper than he remembered Rafferty’s eyes being, and the hands that gripped his outstretched arms stronger, too. “Matt, that’s my girl. Don’t you step between a man and his family,” with man and family spat. “Ellen! We’re going home.”
Matt forced Corbin against the wall.
But when Corbin’s back touched the bricks, he snarled and went limp. Matt lost balance, stumbled forward. His nose struck Corbin’s forehead. Bone crunched. Corbin kicked Matt in the knee. He started to fold, refused to let himself. Caught Corbin around the waist with one arm. An elbow crashed into his shoulder, and again.
“Ellen, get down from there!”
“No,” she said.
“We are going home. Now.” So loud, so shrill, his voice was almost breaking. “You listen to me.”
“Stop it,” Claire said.
* * *
The demon that rode Umar made him blend with alley shadows and observe the Market Square, the gathered congregation of this little goddess, lending her their faith so she might perform miracles.
A girl stood on a dais before them, and the Lady of the Moon was with her. Through her ran a path to the goddess’s heart, to freedom. All he had to do was seize her, and drink.
The demon tensed Umar’s legs to run.
Then the shadows turned jade.
A thin man stood in the alley mouth. He wore a gray goat’s beard and mismatched clothes, and behind him—or in place of him, as if he cast a brilliant shadow or were himself the shadow cast by a greater form—rose an ibis head in green. The thin man’s cheeks were wet.
The mind the demon rode named the figure: “Hasim.”
“Do not speak my name,” Hasim said, “with his tongue. You debase it.”
The demon made Umar move, fast.
Hasim’s light moved faster. The ibis struck. Its beak passed through Umar’s chest, but did not pierce. It clutched the demon like a frog and drew it screaming from Umar’s body into the strange cold world where these fleshlings lived. Exposed, about to die, the demon fled—seeping through small holes in this alien world back to its own.
Umar opened his eyes. Hasim’s light stung them. They embraced, and kissed. Umar’s shoulders heaved once, a sob that strangled itself.
“It hurt,” Umar said.
“Not anymore.”
* * *
Claire, dependable Claire, the iron prop on which Corbin leaned, advanced upon him, full of rage. He released Matt, and sought the wall for support.
“Claire,” he said. “Ellen doesn’t know what she’s doing. We need to help her. Where’s Hannah?”
“Hannah,” Claire said, “is safe with Mr. Adorne’s family. Ellen is where she needs to be. We are not yours to order. We aren’t your kids anymore. You haven’t let us be for a long time.”
“Claire, the girls don’t know. The moon, she’s lying to you all. They need help.”
“I bought your line, Father. I helped you too damn much. I held all this together for you. I shored you up and I kept my sisters weak.”
“Claire!”
“You’re sick,” she said. “You’ve been sick a long time. You need help. You—you don’t get to order her, or Hannah, or me, anymore. This is Ellen’s place. You can’t chase her from it. If you try, I’ll stop you.”
Corbin’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Matt,” she said. “Watch him. We have work to do.”
She left them, and walked to the stage, where Ellen stood in a ring of light. She took her hand, and the light healed, and the whirlpool turned.
The crowd prayed.
Corbin fell, and watched his daughters lead them.
* * *
—And as fast as the world skewed, it settled back. Tara sped through the goddess’s net. Those were her feet walking the moon road. She found firm footing on—what was this? More than reality. Surreality. The world above.
Whatever it was, she could walk it.
And because it was everywhere, each step brought her anywhere she wished to go—anywhere the moon answered to Seril’s name.
Wait. So I’ve been walking inside you—and you’re under attack in Alt Coulumb—so if you die there, then I—
I don’t know what happens in that case. You’re me at the moment, and I’m you, so maybe you die also. Or you’re stuck out here in god-space. Craftswomen ask too many questions about the unknowable.
It’s not unknowable. Just unknown.
There came a timeless silence.
Where do I get off, Tara asked.
Wherever I want, she answered herself.
Alt Coulumb?
Coming up. But are you sure there’s nothing you’d like me to fix, long as you’re here? A little guilt to absolve? Anger or self-hatred to rub away?
She felt revulsion at herself for even considering, but she heard laughter, too, high and clear.
I was just fooling. But I’m here if you need me.
I know.
Tara turned to leave the moon road, but hesitated, one foot hovering over eternity.
Yes?
Now that you mention it, this suit needs some work.