River’s End ch 60: Your Second Sin

If given time, Lul would have accepted my challenge. I would not have given up my advantageous position, so no matter what I did, things would have ended the same. I told myself this again and again over the next several days, but still, the scene haunted me.

Lul hesitated, probably scheming how to defeat a woman standing on the head of a giapro. Shooting would have been an excellent strategy, but the crowd might have frowned upon it. Conversely, they might have thought it clever. I didn’t know enough about these people to predict their tactics. So, I stood and stared and just breathed, hopefully cutting an intimidating figure.

The uncle broke our stalemate with a loud accusation of cowardice. Lul should concede to my claim of Grr’s worth or accept my offer of combat. The crowd hummed their agreement.

He stood so very close to the dais’ unprotected edge, all it took was a push. Unlike on Grenswa, gravity was faithful here. It did the rest.

No soft bed of feathers broke his fall, though they could have. I could have caught him, had I wanted to badly enough. My need to save him would have compelled the giapro forward. But I wasn’t that chivalrous.

Despite the blood darkening the sand around his crumpled form, I believed him still alive at that point, but the beasts had smelled his leaking fluids. I had already denied them one meal. This was the web of life. A mother had to fill the bellies of her young, and with injuries so grave, Lul would not have healed anyway.

With a roar, the mother claimed her prey, foot crushing, talons piercing. As she held the body still, the young ones bit and tore, and I looked away. I covered my ears, held my breath, and sunk into myself.

‘Fredo, this is awful. I’m so alone, and I need you.’

He was a phantom floating within his sector of my mind, back turned to me. Beneath him, flames danced upon the ice.

He knew I was there. He heard me, but he didn’t answer. Instead, rustling sounded from Ishiyae’s corner, and I remembered why I shouldn’t contact Fredo. Did he know? Was that why he ignored me?

The thought was barbed with doubt and betrayal. I swallowed it, but it stung all the way down.

As I pushed back into the outside world with its iron smell and harsh light, someone stared at me. I shouldn’t have taken particular note of it—a whole crowd watched the goings-on of this arena—but this one bored into my forehead. As if a net pulled ashore, my gaze was towed to the dais where Lul had stood.

Another balanced on the very edge, an old man with eyes so wrinkled and droopy, I would have questioned whether he could see at all if I hadn’t felt the pin of his focus. Silver caked his chest because apparently he and the twelve equally buff giants flanking him considered paint to be an acceptable form of shirt.

“Claim be you goddess-kin, and obey giapro to you.”

His words reeked of challenge. I shouldn’t have expected any less. This was the city that chased out Alaysq, someone who knew a lot more about this world. She had no doubt made a show of her descent from the sky and her wonderous technology. What had I done to prove my distant relation to their absent creator? Led a teen into a trap, then saved him with tenuous sway over these beasts. Gotten a healthy young man eaten.

I didn’t even have a plan for how to get off this giapro’s head, let alone after that. The man on the dais was a Silver Crumb, same as the village leader that had sunk her teeth into my shoulder.

I stood as tall and steady as I could and fixed a narrowed stare on him. “Your hospitality is unmatched. I’ll be sure to tell all my friends.”

His mouth twitched, indecisive between a smirk and a frown. “Gift you to us to giapro as feast?”

This grammar was impossible. Did he ask if I would give them to the giapro or the other way around?

It didn’t matter. My answer was the same either way. One death was already too many.

“No.”

His brows billowed briefly as if lifted by a light breeze. “Neither would Kel.” He held out a hand, but I was a story too short to reach it. “Come.”

“And give up this comfy seat? You come to me instead.”

At a flick of his gaze, darts shot from lower windows and sunk into the neck of each giapro. The first note of another roar shredded the air, but the sedative worked quickly. She wobbled, outrage fizzling into fading mews. As our perch collapsed, I dove onto Grr and desperately grasped every feather within my reach.

The world stilled, but I barely had time to notice the sound of beastly snores before the burly men of the crumb’s posse ripped me from this downy haven. Ropes striped the wall—presumably their method of safe passage down here—and with me over one’s shoulder and Grr over another’s, they scurried back up to the dais.

Without a word, they set me in front of their leader, still tangled in long feathers. Before I could even register the stone beneath my thin shoes, he grabbed my face, fingers hooked behind my ears and thumbs pressing into the hinge of my jaw. Releasing an indignant squeak, my mouth fell open.

“Are the teeth and ears correct.” He hauled me closer to clouded, nearly buried eyes. My toes could only brush the ground. “Are the eyes paler and not the same shape as Kel. Have these eyes more passion and less wisdom.”

“Excuse me for being a child.”

With a smirk, he lowered me and asked my age. How much time had passed since I left Seallaii? I had told Queen Jianthy I was nearly eighteen. Surely the anniversary of my birth had come and gone by this point.

The Silver Crumb introduced himself as Pol. He had just turned three hundred—too young for a Seallaii-na to have such wrinkles, and too old for a Shlykrii-na at all.

***

Pol had known Kel, the father of Lily. That made Kel Ishiyae’s father, too, and Fredo’s. I gobbled every scrap he could tell me about Fredo’s family. He saw more similarities to them in me than in Alaysq, and while that was worth a small measure of relief, guilt kept its claws in my chest.

Lul’s death was my fault, though none of these people blamed me. None of that would have happened had I not manipulated Grr, yet they rewarded me. They treated me as an idol, gave me anything I asked for and beyond.

My first task that night was to map the constellations and figure out where this world was. The next day, I measured time. The Rablah-nas did not count hours, only positions of the sun. So, I rigged a straw to drip water into a bucket at a constant rate and calculated how much had fallen by sunset, then again at sunrise. Nine hours of daylight, seven of darkness.

Like us, they slept on beds of yewn. This proper rest combined with potent medicine healed my wounds at a miraculous rate. When I questioned how they knew what to give me, they could not spell out the differences between us, but this was the oldest city on Rablah. Fredo’s family had lived here, and the procedures regarding how to care for the needs of goddess-kin were well documented, even if they were written in script I could not read.

Grr could, and he stuck near me constantly, even sleeping curled at my feet. He was mine, Pol said, and Grr repeated his words every time I denied it.

“Use you to me as choose you.”

So, I had him read aloud their laws and procedures. I told him to explain everything about each random item in the house and on the street. I challenged him to question how and why things worked. Because no one else did. These Rablah-nas lacked Seallaii-na curiosity. They didn’t wonder how things happened or explore what could be.

At first, Grr’s every explanation amounted to: because this is the way it is done. Yet slowly, he anticipated the kinds of answers I wanted. He mimicked my speech patterns, and I sometimes found myself slipping into theirs.

As I collected the materials I would need to build a transmitter, I was often distracted just watching them. While they were swift to pick up on steps I showed them, they rarely understood my explanations, no matter how basic. They followed my instructions and crafted the requested items with more skill than I could have hoped for. Yet, they could not grasp how two materials melted, combined, and cooled in such a way could become something stronger. Even when I drew out the shapes of molecules, they did not see why it had to be these ingredients and not others.

Was this a strike against the makeup of their mind or a result of my poor teaching ability?

At first, I thought it was curiosity that gathered large crowds behind me every time I left Pol’s residence. Then Grr read aloud that someone should always be within hearing distance to cater to my whims and protect me from danger. A position like his was an honor. The masses didn’t follow me because they wondered what I was up to. They wanted me to ask them to do something.

After that, I made it a point to request a lot of favors.

I caught myself building things I didn’t need, tools to make their daily tasks easier. Their delight at receiving such gifts wrapped my heart in glee. It was addicting and occasionally frustrating because they still never bothered to wonder how things could be done better. I served as their curiosity, as their conduit for progress. I was a missing component they needed.

A thought slithered through my mind, feasting on these interactions.

I could stay here. I should stay here.

I had a place on Rablah, a purpose. I was not expected to be a visible but silent sarquant. I had real value. Fredo could come live here, too, and learn more about his family. I would invite Dollii, and she would have a whole plan whipped up for this world in no time.

But what about Hent and the other abducted Grenswa-nas? Much as I wanted to say I could take down the River’s End and care for its prisoners, in this gravity, Hent would die within an hour. Bringing him here would be the last step in a string of impossible hopes. As if I would be able to fight that ship and win.

It was thoughts of Hent that kept my head in the clouds, though. He needed me more than these Rablah-nas. Even if I said I would transmit a call for help and trust the Sojourners to save him, it wasn’t enough. The thought of leaving it entirely in their hands frightened me.

Here I was on a world designed by a Sojourner eteriq, proof that their experiments were imperfect and sometimes cruel. I saw Hent in the kayak on the day we met, claiming a Seallaii-na’s beauty was a trap and a lie. His brilliant orange as he told of limbs severed for the sake of what-if. Inky black spilling over his scales and pooling in his eyes when he learned I, too, was River Guardian.

He wouldn’t trust them. Frankly, I didn’t either. Which would they value more: the title hero when they returned the lost prince? Or a chance to have all their questions answered about a rare Opal they could say died in the rescue attempt?

My reasoning wasn’t entirely selfless either. I wanted that title to wash away all the stupid decisions I had made. I wanted to be able to say, “Yes, I messed up, but I came through in the end. I didn’t give up on you.” Everything else could be swept under that statement and never seen again.

Deeper even than that logic was an unwillingness to let go. I had to see Hent again. That kiss, his misinterpretation of my charisma, him collapsed in my arms—that could not be the end of our tale.

The more I thought of him, the more I spoke of him. I told Grr all about Grenswa, how different it was to this planet. Endless description bubbled off my tongue—forests and oceans, underwater cities, the moving palace, the pair of princes and the older one’s Silver wife. He listened patiently, but I don’t think he believed it real.

One realization struck me into silence. Grr would have taken one look at Niiq and known she was meant to be queen.

Would the crowds have tried to touch her scales as often as they reached for any part of me that was different? I tied my hair in a pair of buns to resemble their lupine ears, letting the loose ends conceal the alien sides of my head, but strangers still tried to pet me. They only stopped when Grr, sharp teeth visible and ears back, warned them that I didn’t like it.

He wouldn’t be able to fight all my battles for me. Sooner or later, I would have to confront the River’s End, and I needed to be stronger. At set times each day, I practiced moving like Ishiyae, and gradually, my muscles hardened. In time, I could run in this gravity, jump a little, and kick hard enough to make a hole in the wall—which was an accident, and I did apologize.

Little things like that made this place feel like home. “Experts” were in charge of my wardrobe here, too. While I appreciated the regular baths and fresh clothes, I questioned their fashion sense.

The loose leggings were nice. They weighed nothing, hung just past my knees, and came in a variety of colors. The black bodice and belt, however, were stiff, didn’t breathe at all, and failed to cover my midsection. The giapro feathers that had tangled me when I met Pol were turned into something like a grass skirt, intermixed with Lul’s silver rings. These were a symbol of his status within the leader’s family, but they just made me sound like a wind chime.

On the seventh afternoon, Pol announced it was Drinking Day, and I had unpleasant flashbacks of my lalakrii stupor during the Harvest Festival on Grenswa. This rite had nothing to do with alcohol, though. They would make it rain.

Said to be the first planted by Lily, a tree grew in the center of the city. Its branches defined a diameter almost as wide as it was tall, and no structures had been built anywhere near its reach. I recognized the gnarly bark and thick, winding structure of a baffble tree, but the wood wept scarlet, and a silvery sheen glazed the azure leaves. Probably a gene-spliced relative, then, like these people were to mine.

Pol straddled a large drum nestled within a tangle of roots and beat it with a pair of rods. He offered me a turn, but I could barely lift even one rod, so I stood to the side and watched. Grr hovered just behind me as always.

The crowd surrounding the tree was difficult to see through the iridescent feathers my experts had affixed to my eyelashes. It didn’t help that with every blink, these dipped into the silver and black cream on my cheeks. Like I said, questionable fashion choices.

As Pol drummed, the assembly marched a long circuit, one step for every beat. The longer this went on, the more Grr fidgeted, and I understood. I felt it, too. The air held a restless energy as if the sky weighed more than the ground and they were about to switch places.

I turned toward him as smoothly as I could, but the silver rings on my belt and hair still chimed.

His ears folded against his head, and he tried to look small. “Walk we also?”

We didn’t seem to be accomplishing anything by standing there, so why not?

At my nod, his ears popped forward, and he towed me into the stomping crowd. My black shoes—more like socks really—did nothing to block out the sand’s heat, nor did the rest of my outfit, and yes, it was sweltering. Everyone carried fire on some form of stick. An auntie handed Grr a sputtering star on a thin metal string, and he joined other boys in swinging it around with gusto.

It was probably for the best that no one offered me any of these sparking trinkets. I would have caught something on fire—probably my own hair or pants. But it was enough to be among them, laughing, skipping, constantly moving. Our feet were one with the drum. Our rhythm shook the ground and shimmied through my bones.

As our toes pressed into the path over and over, a wide trench formed, lined by packed sand. Wind swirled around us, and an electric charge stood our hair on end. Clouds shielded the sun, and the crowd launched great, flaming missiles at them. The sky answered with thunder, then a deluge.

The rain was cold and fell hard, and I ran for the shelter of the tree. As I watched Grr and his friends dance at the edge of the quickly-filling gulch, I wondered how much of this was coincidence and how much was science. If only I had a tablet and access to a database.

I did have access to people who could look up the information I wanted. Inshiyae. Alaysq. Fredo, depending on where he was. If I reached out to him, would he ignore me again?

Perhaps my whim summoned him. Maybe we were so in sync that he thought of me in the same moment I thought of him. Possibly, this was a natural effect of our bond, but with that thought, I felt him as if his arms wrapped me from behind.

He whispered something too faint for me to hear.

‘Fredo?’ I sank into his embrace, his incredible warmth. He was more solid than he had ever been in my mind, almost exactly like his brother.

Doubt sprouted in that thought.

He murmured, ‘I’m close, but I need you to show me exactly where you are.’

What if this wasn’t Fredo? I hadn’t told Ishiyae of my connection to his twin, but what if he found out anyway? Hent could have told him. Or Alaysq. My own dreams could have betrayed me.

You know what, it was probably Paqo. I’m going to destroy that robot.

I didn’t know if it was possible to disguise oneself while in a mindscape, but if impersonating his brother would trap me, Ishiyae would find a way to do it.

‘I won’t fall for it.’ I shoved away from him, and Alaysq was there.

She threatened him, but surely it was all part of their plan.

‘It’s a trick. You haven’t captured my Fredo.’

They couldn’t have. Unless he ran into the trap first. If he came to rescue me, and I wasn’t there. It was my fault again.

‘Alaysq.’ My voice was the edge of a knife. ‘If that really is Fredo, and you hurt him, I’ll hate you for all eternity.’

Her fog slithered around me, vaporous hands more slimy than wet. ‘I would rather feel fire than nothing.’

‘Then burn.’

Before, I pushed her away with the wind of my will. This time, I made that wind hot. As a gale full of flickering embers pushed her back into her corner, she laughed.

My head turned, eyes scouring every line of my surroundings, not at my command. It continued to do so against my command. As when Ishiyae had controlled my limbs, I sat behind my own gaze, a prisoner in a body that whispered its sensations and moved at the will of another.

It wasn’t Ishiyae this time. This mind fit to me with more familiarity, like a shoe already broken in, conforming to every curve of my sole. This was one who had known me for years, with whom a bond had grown as we ourselves grew.

‘Fredo, what are you doing?’

I trusted him always. Surely he had a reason, but soon, Ishiyae would notice, if he hadn’t already. He or Alaysq would use this interaction to trace me.

That didn’t matter if Fredo was closer and could get here first, if he had brought backup, someone strong and wise enough to fight the River’s End and win.

He walked me toward the tree’s trunk. Though the rain pelted my skin, I no longer felt it. All I saw were stars. My mouth opened, and my hand rose. As if from a great distance, Grr called after me, a warning not to touch the tree.

Then, I was someone else. I was short and frail, unsure of these pudgy limbs, but I would not let others see my weakness. Magma boiled in my core and frothed on the back of my tongue.

My voice had a metallic growl. “Wisteria told you I was not dead, and you assumed her mad. You killed her.”

The man to whom I spoke was nowhere in sight of my beloved first tree, my founding city on Rablah, now in crumbling ruins a mere hundred years after I had left it. Yet, he would hear me, no matter the distance. My vedia? No, my father.

His disapproval is smoke clogging the space between us. “You are not Lily. I should never have allowed her to create you.”

“I am half of her. I gave the Surra-nas ships so I could travel the sea of stars and return to you, but now I discover your second sin, Father. You abandoned my worlds, and they are ruined, but I will make it up to my Rablah-nas. I will give them a planet already complete and beautiful. I will give them Grenswa. Conquering it will serve as practice for when I destroy Seallaii.”

***

A soft, damp cloth dabbed at my neck, and I opened my eyes. Grr’s silhouette hovered beneath twisted branches and the brilliant spackling of the night sky.

“Forgive you to me, goddess-kin.” He tilted his head and spoke slowly as he formulated a sentence with a facsimile of my grammar. “Your lunch returned, so Grr cleaned to it.”

I tasted that once he mentioned it. With a pained swallow, I forced myself to sit up. “Why are we still outside?”

“Said Grand Silver Crumb move not to you. Gave the tree to you a vision. Can see only goddess-kin to them.”

Not just any goddess-kin either, I was willing to bet. It was another memory echo, drawing in those capable of forming a bond. How different this Lily had been from the curious girl Wisteria had watched impatiently press against the window as this world gained breathable air. This was a dark, angry creature.

I gasped, bile burning my throat. Whatever that being was, it claimed to have given Shlykrii the technology to travel the stars. It vowed to give Grenswa to the Rablah-nas.

Was this half-Lily behind Shlykrii’s initial attack on Grenswa?

An image of Hent flashed behind my eyes, scales teal pierced with electrum when he read my warning note.

“Nearly two centuries’ve passed since we’ve heard anythin’ from Shlykrii, since they nearly wiped us out. They never told us what they wanted.”

As they had then, hot tears pooled along my lashes, but I felt them deeper this time.

Oh Hent, they wanted your people to die, to be out of the way so they could give your land to others.

Grr sat on his knees in silence, ears erect and tail twitching. He wanted the tale of what I saw. How many of them knew of this half-Lily’s promise to give them a complete world? Did they know it already belonged to someone else? Would they still want it?

Though the night air was as warm as it had ever been, a chill sunk into my joints, and I stiffened. I wrapped my arms around myself. “Grr, you don’t actually worship your goddess, do you? She’s dead.”

His ears swiveled in opposite directions, and he shifted closer to me. “Create not she to us?”

“She did.”

“Then owe we to her respect.”

That made sense, but it wasn’t the answer I wanted. I knew how they treated me. They thought of Lily as fragile, mortal, and because of that, something to be protected. But they needed to realize she was fallible, same as me. She made mistakes.

She was probably wrong in giving them life on this world, and if she offered them a better one, that was just as likely wrong, too. They should question it.

“If she or a goddess-kin ever told you—”

I never finished that sentence. A streak of white lit up the sky, then the ground. A pill-shaped transport set down on the choppy lake the rain had left behind. Before the doors unfolded, I knew exactly who was on it.

Continued in chapter 61

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