Motheater followed Kire’s emissary under the world. When they reached the end of the earth, she rose up, her hand resting gently on the stag’s back. They reappeared in the old holler, when the sycamore was still young and green.
The creature walked through the valley, avoiding dark, tar-like pits that Motheater didn’t notice until the spirit carefully stepped around them. Surrounding them was the sound of crickets and cicadas, and as the sun set, moths settled around Motheater’s shoulders.
They arrived at the top of the hill, and Motheater could see the ridgeline of Kire over the next low valley. The emissary spread his legs, leaning his head down. He dug his nose into the loam and snorted, and Motheater watched as the land was stripped away from the stone. The forest was lifted first, pine needles melting into cotton. Then the dead leaves were brushed away, and the moss, the trees evaporated into clouds, finally the dark dirt of the earth itself, all of it lifting into the air like a swarm of locusts.
Motheater covered her eyes as the dirt flew into her face, through her singed brassy hair and into the sky. When she looked around again, all that was there was the bedrock, the massive shape of Kire, the lurking-ness of it, the way it leaned forward, the way it seemed to almost have shoulders, the ridge of its eastern side like a spine, the peak the curve of its neck.
And then it moved, and Kire looked at her.
There was no dust, no birds to disturb, no roots to snap. She felt the heat of its gaze, the anger that she had left there, and she knew that Kire was doing this because of her. The mountain was waking up because of her.
The mountain looked at her, and she knew that to Kire, to the Old Mountain, she was a worm in the dirt. She might have been less than dirt. But she had spoken. And it had listened.
The titan shifted, set stony hands on the ground, on the flesh of its mother, and pushed itself up. The leviathan ripped its mass from the bedrock of the world, the jutting of the valley. Kire shifted and looked along the Appalachian line, at its sisters and brothers that had been beheaded, slumped over. Many of the great titans had passed, hollowed by human hands, leaving rocky, monstrous boulder-skulls.
But there were some, a few siblings down the ridge, in West Virginia, maybe near Charlottesville, that would answer when Kire called, when the mountain howled. There were some that were just sleeping, like Kire had been sleeping. Kire stepped up, out of its cradle, and spread its arms, the many arms, the many hands, the shifting cleavage and planes that made up the old titan of the new world, and stretched.
His joints popped, and the sound was like thunder. Motheater’s ears rang with the pressure.
She had never seen him like this, never imagined Kire like this. It was huge, easily three times taller now, six-limbed, with a face carved from stone. It was ursine, an amaranthine beast that appeared like a calamity. Motheater resisted the urge to go to her knees as Kire went down on their front limbs.
Then Kire looked at her again, the little witch, and Motheater knew that if it came down to a match of fury between the mountain and Old Scratch himself, there was no telling who was angrier. The mountain wanted Motheater’s revenge, wanted all of them dead, and its power was palpable. It opened its mouth, dark, gaping, a hell-maw, and Motheater couldn’t breathe.
There were the pockmarks against cleavage and stratifications, the great, gaping wounds rent into stone. The wounds were dark, oozing black gold sludge from every cut and shaft. Kire had been bled for centuries. Kire saw her, and it moved toward its witch.
And then the emissary moved around Motheater, dragging her back into the modern holler, and Motheater shut her eyes. When she opened them again, she was face-to-face with the bone-lace creature, standing alone in a stream that did not end.
“I will stop this.” Motheater’s voice cracked. “I can lay Kire to rest.” She was responsible for this. And she had to finish it. “I still need Jasper,” she whispered. “I still don’t know my name. He’s still got a part of me.”
The admission hurt, but it was true. He had returned the magic she had sent into the tree to connect them, but she was still unmade. There were parts of her she still didn’t know, bone shards left in the rock when she was hewn out of Kire. It still claimed her.
The stag sharpened its tines along Motheater’s jaw, a warning. The waters began to rise, over her calves, now past her knees. She would drown here, in this in-between space.
“I will never leave these mountains. I will never leave this place. My soul will never bear a moth, my power will extinguish, I repent all holds, even those I only dreamed to claim. I am sorry I took Jasper’s choice. He should have it back.”
She thought about her cabin, the opossum families she fed. She thought about Bennie, the softness of her bed, the expression on her face when she found something exciting. And Zach, she thought of his family, his doggedness. And then, Bennie again, her fingers spread across a map, her hands on a steering wheel, her hands on Motheater’s shoulders.
“I would give it up. I would trade all of it. I will give myself back.” She would trade everything she had. A powerful bargain.
Jasper had done the same. He had his own life, his own powers, a town that loved him like a son, and he had given it up to bring Motheater back. The water was at her chest, rising to her neckline. It would be so easy to slip under, to give up, to let herself be washed away. When she exhaled and opened her eyes, she was back in the holler.
The giant bone-lace stag walked over the draft, its hooves disappearing into the water. It took only seconds, and then the spirit passed through some veil and left. Motheater felt a new weight in her chest, another hagstone tied around her neck. Another burden.
Motheater was shaking. The deal was in motion. She pulled the unquilted scraps of herself closer. Glancing over at the grove, she saw Bennie, scrambling to run down into the vale, coming to her. For a few seconds, all Motheater could see was her face. The world slid down to Benethea Mattox and the way she looked as she skipped over the large rocks that led down to where Motheater was.
Bennie’s braids had been burned in the fire, some singed almost through. A jolt of guilt struck through Motheater, but before she could say anything, Bennie had pulled her close, wrapping her up in a tight hug.
Motheater’s heart might have gone right out of her. She held onto Bennie, closing her eyes, her arms around Bennie’s waist. She smelled the sweat, the stale car, the bad gas station stench that still clung to her after a long day in the western Virginia heat with no respite, and felt like maybe Kire didn’t matter so much compared to Bennie holding her right now.
“I was so fucking worried,” Bennie said, pulling back, putting her hands on Motheater’s face. Motheater tilted her head up, smiling just a little.
“Sorry,” she said, keeping her hands on Bennie’s hips. “I got a little lost.”
“Yeah, you think?” Bennie chuckled, then leaned down to press her forehead against Motheater’s.
Motheater took a deep breath in, slow like the draft. She felt the connection between her and Bennie had been made stronger for all Motheater’s resolve to give her up. When she pulled away, the little fairy crosses had found the two of them, surrounding them like the rings of a planet, five of them turning around them. Motheater held a hand out, and the crosses fell, single file, into her palm.
“Sorry about your hair,” Motheater said, tucking the crosses into her pocket as they walked up the holler toward Jasper and Zach.
“It’s fine,” Bennie said, waving her hand. “It’s synthetic. I’ll try to fix it tonight.”
Motheater blinked. “I don’t know what that means.”
Bennie laughed. “Of course not.”
Motheater smiled and let it lie. When they got to the top of the holler, she went to Jasper, looking him over slowly.
“You look good,” she said quietly.
“Mm.” Jasper was not smiling. He looked shaken and gaunt, white streaks through his long hair, lines across his face. He wasn’t the man Motheater remembered. At least he hadn’t aged the full time, only about twenty years. “I suppose I have to thank you for giving that tree a mind to keep me as alive as it did.”
“I didn’t mean to do that,” Motheater said quietly. “I would never have just left you.”
“And yet, there I was, done left.”
Motheater clenched her hands. “I was forced away,” she said, voice measured.
Jasper was a different man. His cheekbones sharper, eyes more pointed, mouth full and stained slightly red, like the leaves of the sycamore. He had grown even taller, become handsome and bright-eyed, tempered and aged within the tree. He might have been fetching back in time, but now he was devastatingly beautiful, and Motheater marveled at their difference, that she became a hollowed creature, and he had left the sycamore more refined than when she had left him there. He deserved to be alive, he deserved to live, even if it had to be now.
Motheater noticed that Zach hadn’t looked away from Jasper once.
“All right.” Bennie interrupted the tense moment, taking Motheater’s hand again and starting to head toward the path. Motheater followed, happy to get away from Jasper’s glare, happy to have Bennie’s hand in hers. “Catch us up on the way out of here. It’s nearly dark.”
Before she and Bennie stepped into the forest, there was a loud creak, and then a snap. Motheater turned as a sheaf of trees slid down Kire. A whole patch of land shifting, dislodging the earth and stone, creating a massive mudslide of trench and branch. Any birds that had refused to leave their new-laid nests swarmed up, a cacophony of despair as their eggs scattered, as their homes fell. The trees moved together, like a running river, turning down the western side away from Kiron.
“What in the hell is going on,” Zach said, speaking for the first time in hours, voice cracking. A spell had been undone, again. “What the fuck was that?”
Bennie squeezed Motheater’s hand.
The witch looked at Bennie, something unknowable caught in her throat, a different kind of heat in her belly. She only had a short amount of time. They needed to prepare. She looked back to Kire, the shifting mass, the hulk, the leviathan of Appalachia. “The mountain’s awake.”