In my dreams, it is very easy for me to hold my enemies in my hands. I know their names, their faces, their motives. I can rise on spread wings with a spear in my hand and target their leader and cut him down. Their forces dissolve in the fog of dreams, and I am victorious.
In the true world, when I awake sodden with exhaustion from my ordeal, I realize I skirt defiance (even treason) against the nation I have served all my life. I consort with gods of other people’s faiths, turning my back on my own. My army is swollen by the illegal ranks of my adopted country. I no longer remember the distinction between the godkin and baseborn mongrel…and I have borne a child to my enemies.
Ragna can perhaps be forgiven for hesitating when she sees the expression I wear when I wake.
“You should go back to sleep,” she says, holding an empty teapot in her coarse hands.
“How can I sleep with all this noise?” I reply irritably. I realize then that there is noise, and I don’t know what’s causing it. “What is that noise?”
Ragna looks sheepish. “The party,” she says. “They celebrate your safety and the birth of your child.”
I rub my forehead. “Where is the egg, anyway?”
The pard nods to the corner of the tent. Someone’s built a nest for it, gods love them, a bleeding nest. Hay stolen from mounts, a box that held repaired armor (still streaked with grease), some soft scarves, a blanket. And the egg, the egg which is larger than my fists pressed together. Something that big came out of me? No wonder my body feels stretched senseless.
“Celebration,” I repeat.
“Yes,” Ragna says. She goes back to making the tea. “I would not recommend exiting your tent at this time, Mistress.”
I imagine the mob rushing for me and have an unpleasant, visceral memory of the pards who are responsible for this egg. “No. I assume those are Negrat’s gathered reinforcements?”
“Silfia and Donal organized them while you were sleeping. They have their own provisions, plus places to stay.”
“But not for long,” I murmur. I can supply my own men, but an army of this size needs more than my quartermaster’s contingency plans can support. I’ll have to make my move quickly. Fortunately we’re close to the capital...
…which is when I remember the sea.
Sister...
Not yet, I think. I am too tired yet.
“More sleep sounds wise,” I say, sinking back to the blankets. At least in dreams I know how things end.
Ragna tucks me in. “It will be night soon. Then you can slip away.”
Of course she knows that I need to. I blink my parti-colored eyes at her and say, “What will happen when all the gods mark me?”
“Then you will be lucky and cursed,” Ragna says. “But you will still be Angharad Godkin of the Godkindred Kingdom, our Mistress Commander, and even the gods will bow to your intransigence.”
I laugh and rest.
* * *
I wake a second time, restless and hungry. The latter need is swiftly remedied by the fruit and cheese left beside my bed by my mind-reading pard—can she really? I would have said no, but I no longer know what’s possible in this world.
The former…my wings rustle, itch, tremble. I have been grounded too long.
I get dressed. Pace in my tent. Check the egg, fold back one of the blankets…find a hot brick buried beneath the layers. I wonder who thought to do that. Ragna, who seems to know everything? Donal, who grew up on a farm? Silfie, who rules mongrels with their weirdling ways?
No. Probably not Silfie.
I sigh and cover the egg.
When Ragna enters, I say, “I’m going out.”
She nods. “Shall I pack you a basket?”
“No,” I say. And on impulse, “I’m just going to the shore.”
She rolls a blanket, ties it snugly and hands it to me. When I look at it, perplexed, she says, “It gets cold by the sea in the evening.”
I shrug, take it. “I’ll be back.”
She nods and steps out of my way. Wise, wise pard.
I leave the tent and find the camp quiet. It’s after supper, near shift change. The sentries on duty have reached the point of using their remaining energy to focus on their tasks; there is no talk, no wasted movement. There’s something beautiful about such purity of purpose. I had that before.
I still have it. I hope.
Spread my wings. Stretch my neck. Stare up at the stars. They don’t have names, but they have a voice. And then I’m running, fleet and low, and the wind tugs at my feathers, bells up beneath the arches of my wings, and I am aloft, rushing, spiraling, lifting, ever upward into the vespertine blue.
The magnitude of my plan unfolds beneath me as I rise. My camp is now only a small circle, easily identified by the disciplined rows of tents, their symmetry. It lies on the edge of a huge, haphazard encampment. There are brightly-colored tents, lean-tos, people sleeping on blankets in crooked lines. And there are over a thousand of them, if I judge correctly. I sent Negrat to rouse his own folk only. I begin to think he talked to everyone between here and the border. It’s breathtaking.
Did I earn their trust? All those people? Or do they come out of hope that things will change?
As they dwindle beneath me, a brown and gold flash draws my eye and the messenger soars up alongside. All thoughts of making my flight alone vanish at the sight of that bright eye. Of course he should come with me.
“It seems well enough,” I say. “I’m heading for the shore.”
He twirls in the air, a slow-motion somersault onto a higher wind, and banks toward the sea. I grin and follow.
The terrain between here and there is low and sloping…undulating hills that break their sheaths of dark grass to reveal star-pale sand. Our shadows are small smudges fleeing across the ground, sudden against the white, furtive against the black.
And oh, it is good, good to fly. Good to catch the breeze and be carried by the strength of my outstretched pinions, perfectly cupped. Good to see the land rush beneath me while the clouds move above at a more stately pace, and I, I hang in the perfect middle, free and light and swift. The silent messenger is a perfect companion, grinning his corvid grin.
Through my euphoria, I think: This will be my land. And as I fly, I gather it in with all my senses, the brine-touched breeze of it, the shadow of clouds on its hills, and my own, passing.
That collection of darkness and light there: the capital. Closer than I’ve seen it.
I climb onto higher, smoother air and use it for the lazy spirals that seem natural to it, describing ever higher arcs above the capital. The corvid messenger follows me, feathers spread on those surprisingly broad wings.
People move through the evening streets. They would be disturbed if they knew I could see them moving, blurry but discrete, from this high above them and in the near-dark. I watch the flow of daytime businesses closing and evening ones opening, the life of the city. Looking for…I don’t know. Some sign of choking, of catarrh, of disease of the spirit. But the people wend their ways, smooth as flowing blood through the arteries of their streets, and I can draw no conclusion. They are merely people, exercising their routines. They care nothing for sickness in their governor’s head, or they are a willing part of it, feverish with complicity.
They don’t know that I’m coming, like anger, like a healer with a cauterizing sword.
Beyond the city is the thunder and hiss of the ocean. I glide down, catch an obliging wind, head for the shore. My small brown shadow paces me as I crook away, safely out of reach. Being shot down once was enough.
The wind grows warmer, the air denser. The ground moves faster, faster, and then my feet are running, spraying dark sand as I run off my momentum and feel once again the embrace of the Land. The messenger lights, an unexpected weight on my shoulder that I roll under, almost stumbling.
“Glutton,” I say. “When did you get so heavy?” He only laughs, silent, beak gaped.
Here I am. Close enough for the water to lap my boots. I shuck them, hopping on one foot while the messenger croaks his amusement and clings. I roll my pants up to my knees, leaving my thin legs exposed to the cold wind, wet and salty. Ragna was right, of course. With a deep breath, I wade out to meet Her.
I am wet up to my knees, and the tide is so strong I sway with it every time it rushes past me, breaking in white spray against my shins. I think about sending the messenger away, off my shoulder, but I can’t. I don’t want to be alone. Some part of me is afraid. If all three of them take me, will I dissolve? Will I transform? I hate this. I hate not being able to predict or plan for contingencies. There’s no scenario-drafting for religion. No war games. No test runs.
Silence. Just the rush of the water, like a giant thing breathing, hissing, tugging at me and pushing me away. The sky is growing cold and dark, and I suddenly feel myself against the scope of these powers. A sky so huge it touches the entire world. Water so vast and so deep it dwarves the Land.
“You,” I say softly. “You are more like the Stars than they are, aren’t you.”
No answer.
I close my eyes and try to remember her words, hazy as they are. I was…preoccupied when she spoke to me. But when they do drift to the surface of my mind, I blush.
You are strong as I am strong. So strong that we are feared. We long to be known and put our mysteries on our surfaces for the brave to explore, but no one dares. We feel obvious and yet people call us enigmas.
I hike my wings up and plow into the unfathomable waters. My toes claw at the soft sand as I go deeper. I hesitate. But no, this is not a time for hesitation and I am sure of myself now, I know how to proceed, I can act.
I dive.
I know how to swim. I was born by the sea. But learning to swim meant always having my back above water. Curling my wings over it, using them as sails. Bathwater, so much gentler than saltwater, I can lave over my feathers; even that is a careful operation, as Magwen and Ragna discovered. I don’t have a bird’s small pinions, to dry with a little spreading in the sun.
My gasp is lost in the water when I plunge into it, separating from the corvid messenger. Cold, heavy, dense…I feel like I’m drowning, like I have giant wet towels strapped to my back. My throat constricts in a moment of panic that I have ruined myself, that my own source of freedom, my wings, might drag me to death in the undertow. Maybe this was a mistake…but it was the right mistake. I had to come.
I claw myself through the water with arms and legs that seem inconsequential, powerless. Try to dive deeper into the black, to meet Her…run into my own need for breath. I come up for air, choking on salt and cold, and can’t even lift my wings above me. The muscles on my back were never meant to bear the weight of them water-logged. Paddling, hair plastered across my eyes and over my throat, I struggle to head deeper.
I must look like a drowned cat. A suicidal one, at that, thrashing toward my doom instead of away.
Suddenly, it’s funny. It’s uproariously funny, comical, absurd. I start laughing and try to leap out of the water like a porpoise toward Her fathomless horizon. “Here I come!” I exclaim. “It might take me a few days, but here I come!”
I hear Her laughter all around me, am caught in it, like being held in a cup. The aches in my arms recede. The water smooths beneath my body. This time when I dive, it’s effortless…like flying through the heavy black. I twirl, spread my wings…dance. The water shivers around me as nameless creatures flee my approach. I breathe, and don’t know how, and sway like kelp in Her currents.
I should have better words. I should be able to describe it. I should be able to remember it better, should somehow imprison that perfect exhilaration to keep with me always. But I can’t. All I know is that some indefinable time later I am forging my way onto the strand, dripping, tranquil inside. That seawater flows in long runnels off my sodden hair, drips over my eyes, accentuates the cold breeze as it breaks around my thin body. That the air I breathe is sweet, that Her brine-bright smell is perfume on a cool, deep night.
That my wings are dry.
The corvid messenger lands on my shoulder again. I turn back to the ocean and smile. Say, “Good night, sister.” And then take a long breath, trying to center myself back in reality, and ruffle the messenger’s breast-feathers. “Let’s go back.”
He eyes me askance, as if something has changed. I suppose something has. I grin and spiral up into the sky.
Not long after I come to a neat landing near the back of my tent. The men standing guard stare at me, but why should they not? I just had a child. I must look as serene as I feel. It’s to be expected. I nod to them and push back the flap, ducking inside.
It’s when Ragna, unflappable Ragna, inserts a pause into her usual smooth movements at the sight of me that I know something’s changed. Being Ragna she recovers so quickly as to make the hesitation imperceptible to those who know her poorly, but I…ah, I know her well.
She brings me a mirrored glass.
I understand. I sit on my bunk carefully, oh so carefully.
“The Sea has had you, and now you are complete,” Ragna says.
And all the world will know it to see me. Or at least it feels that way. The silvery gray encircling one eye has now gone a crisp, cold white. The streak trails like the ends of comets over my cheek and throat into my hairline. The white forelock has enlarged…now I have a long white swath in my crimson mane.
My eye…I can hardly look at it. It is not merely the color that’s changed. It’s that you become disoriented because some part of you is trying to fit the world into it. Green waves, black water, golden fields, blue sky. The dapples of shadows and stars.
But somehow you notice all of that last.
Because my wings are now black.
Oh, the red and orange markings, those are still there. But the field beneath them is no longer salt-white. It’s black, the black of waves at midnight…and because these are feathers, not cloth, they iridesce the cold rainbow colors of the sea. Turquoise, ultramarine, storm gray, shimmering green.
Somehow, all of this: black, blue, gold, red, white…somehow it works. I bow my head to Ragna’s words. I am indeed complete.
“It has a name,” Ragna says, looking down at me.
“A name,” I say, studying the palms of my hands. They don’t look different, but I feel…not suspicion, but the sense that something has changed. I start stripping off my pants.
“They will say you are Crowned,” she says.
I look up at her with serene fondness, one leg of my pants tangled around my ankle. “Let me guess, there’s a prophecy.”
“No,” she says with fanned whisker-laugh. “Nothing so organized. Negrat would tell it better.”
“But Negrat isn’t here,” I point out reasonably, shucking off the pants entirely and starting with my shirt laces. She helps now.
“Many have claimed to have been chosen by all the gods of Shraeven,” Ragna says. “But not one of them has been marked by all three so.”
“And there’s no legend about what this Crowned person will do,” I say. When we finish with my shirt I know I was right to undress, because her eyes fasten on my chest and torso. I hold out my hand for the mirror.
“No,” Ragna says, shaking herself just a touch and fetching it. “No, no legends. Speculation only. Curiosity. The gods made no promises, no prophecies, expressed no opinions. We were left to ourselves to wonder what it would mean.”
I look in the mirror. My ventrals now dapple into my dorsals, and it’s not just white. Freckles of red and blue and black and lighter gold. I expect it to be gaudy but it’s not…it’s subtle, a stippled border here, a spray of color there, seen more out of the corner of an eye than head-on. It reminds me of the night sky in reverse. “What do you think it means, od Ragna?”
“I think that it means I will have a home at last,” she says.
I look at her.
“I have never belonged in Shraeven,” Ragna says. “Perhaps I will belong to Angharad’s country.”
If I’d been thinking straight, I’d have been smart enough to fear, to feel unease. But nothing seems impossible right now, not even revolution. The revolution even seems avoidable. I could always manage this change peaceably, undermining the Godson without having to fight him.
Possible. Everything seems possible. Even when Silfie enters the tent and stops to stare at what Shraeven has made of me.
“You look like a peacock,” Silfie says.
I laugh. “There are worse things.” I set my hands on my knees. She meets my gaze but doesn’t move from the tent’s entrance. There’s a distance between us that I did not put there…not on purpose, anyway. I can’t cross it for her.
“I…wanted to see that you were healthy,” Silfie says after a moment. “Childbirth is hard on a body.”
And she would know. But I don’t get to answer her this time.
“Why do you pretend you were not here while she slept?” Ragna asks.
Silfie flattens her ears against her copper curls. “That wasn’t yours to tell.”
“Are you so ashamed of caring for her?” Ragna asks.
Silfie’s stare is a marvel to behold. I almost laugh. I’ve had that look on my face before courtesy of Ragna’s pointed questions. It’s like being pole-axed. I wait to see what she’ll do.
“No,” Silfie says. Then, “Yes.” She looks bewildered. “What kind of question is that? I can’t answer it. I don’t know the answer.”
“How can you not know something so elemental?” Ragna wonders. She’s folding my clothing now as if this is the most normal conversation to be having in all the world. “Love is a simple thing.”
“No it’s not,” Silfie says.
“Yes,” Ragna says. “It is. It’s only how you act on it that makes it complicated. And you have been complicating matters for weeks now. Has it made you happy?”
“No!” Silfie says. Then she looks at me, teeth bared and ears taut against her head. “Is she always like this?”
“Worse sometimes,” I say.
“Why do you keep her?”
I laugh. “Because she’s always like this, and worse sometimes.” I smile. “Besides, she keeps herself.”
Ragna huffs.
“I came,” Silfie says, straightening, “to ask you a question.”
“Always,” I say.
“I want to take a lover,” Silfie says.
Did the sea sedate me, I wonder? Because no frisson of horror washes through my body. There’s no tightening of my stomach, no bile in my mouth, sour and burning. No, I just look at her. Look at the body still svelte despite the grinding wear of years. The brassy brightness of her ringlets. The defiance and pain mingled in her copper eyes. See her and my memory of her at the same time and realize that they no longer fit at the edges, no longer describe reality.
I remember that it was a question, despite the wording. I need to answer. What can I possibly say that wouldn’t hurt her more? To say ‘go ahead’ is to give her to believe I don’t care about her. To say ‘no’ is to chain her, who hates chains so.
The words that come out are unplanned.
“Why do you have to ask my permission?”
She looks away. It is not a kind question.
“I thought to be polite,” Silfie says.
“Polite,” I muse. Polite is not something you are to those you love. Polite is a mask. Polite is a way to hide what you feel. To lie.
“I didn’t want to just do it and have you find out in a roundabout way,” she says, shifting on her feet. I hear anger now. She offered me a chance for a courteous scene, for a way to pretend, and I refused it.
“I suppose that is a kindness,” I say. I look up at her. “Is there someone specific?”
“There might be,” she says, and I can’t tell if that means yes or no.
“Go, then,” I say. “Do as you will.” Before the look of cautious relief can settle on her face, I say, “But I love you, Silfia. I always will.”
“Some part of you always will,” she says, looking at my body. No, not my body. At the changes in it. “But there’s not much of it left.” And then she goes back through the flap.
I stare after her. When Ragna offers me a blanket I hold it to my breast; somehow she knew I needed to cover myself before even I did.
“Did she just...”
“No,” Ragna says, whiskers slicked back. “That was only words on top of a feeling she has had for weeks now. It is not a new thing.”
“The words make it real,” I say sadly.
“The words made it plain,” Ragna says. “But nothing stays the same, Angharad.”
No, I think. No, nothing does.
“You should rest,” Ragna says.
“Yes,” I say, because swimming against the tides is a lot more exhausting than I expected. I let her cover me with a second blanket, sagging down onto the mat.
Which is when I remember that I’m a mother. I flail upright again. “The egg?” I can’t see the box from here.
“Don’t worry, it’s still here,” Ragna says. “We moved the box, that’s all.”
“Where?” I ask, clawing my hair out of my eyes and looking around. I spot it near the tent flap. “Is that a good place to put it? Someone might bump into it.”
“No one is going to knock it over,” Ragna says. “The pedestal is too well built. Besides, we needed it in a more accessible place.”
“More accessible?” I ask. “That’s crazy—”
“There are two guards outside your flap and me inside,” Ragna says, pressing a hand to my shoulder and bearing me down. I’d forgotten how strong she is. “No harm will come to it.”
“Then why is it near the door?”
“Because your captains have leaned their heads together and found a new way to reward good behavior,” Ragna says.
Uh oh.
Ragna’s whiskers arch, a pard laugh loud as a bell. “The best disciplined man of the day gets to tend the brick.”
I cover my face with my hands.