Once again I was alone and freezing, the fire in the gallery long turned to cold ash. I heard them calling outside, Jezelia. A story, Jezelia. The room grew pink with dusk.
He had laid it all out quite clearly.
It’s time now. You will say my words. See these things. Do these things.
I would be his pawn.
His army city swam in my vision and then Civica, destroyed, in ashes, the ruins of the citadelle rising like broken fangs on the horizon, plumes of smoke clouding the sky, my own mother a puddle in the midst of rubble, weeping, alone, and tearing her hair from her scalp. I blinked again and again, trying to make the images vanish.
She’s coming.
The words nestled full and warm beneath my ribs.
I heard Aster’s footsteps. They had a weight I knew, a sound that danced with need and hope, a sound as ancient as the ruins around me. She’s coming. They are coming. But now there were more footsteps, urgent. Too many. My chest tightened, and I sat down on the hearth, looking at the floor, trying to discern where the sounds were coming from. The hall? The outside walkways? It seemed as if they surrounded me.
“Miz? What are you doing in here? What happened to the fire? You’ll catch your death in here without your cloak.”
I looked up, and the gallery was full. Aster stood just a few feet away, but behind her a hundred, a thousand milled, a city of another kind spread out. The gallery had no walls, no end, a never-ending horizon, thousands drawing close, watching, waiting, generations, and standing among them, only an arm’s length behind Aster, was Venda.
“They’re waiting for you, Miz. Outside. Don’t you hear them?”
My hair lifted from my shoulders; wind breezed through the gallery, swirling, tickling at my neck.
Siarrah.
Jezelia.
Their voices rose, cutting through the wind, the lamentations of mothers, sisters, and daughters of generations past, the same voices I heard in the valley when I buried my brother, remembrances that rent distant heaven and bleeding earth. Prayers not woven of sounds alone but of stars and dust and evermore.
Yes, I hear them.
“Aster,” I whispered, “turn around and tell me what you see.”
She did as I asked, then shook her head. “I see a mighty big floor in need of a stiff broom.” She stooped and picked up a scrap of red cloth left behind by the dressmakers. “And this here remnant.”
She brought the scrap to me, placing the ragged threads in my hands.
And then the gallery was a gallery again, the walls solid, the thousands gone. I held the fabric in my fist.
All ways belong to the world. What is magic but what we don’t yet understand?
“You all right, Miz?”
I stood. “Aster, would you fetch my cloak for me? The gallery terrace will give me a better view of the square.”
“Not that wall, Miz.”
“Why not?”
“That’s the wall they say”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“they say that’s the one the lady Venda fell from.” She looked around as if expecting to see her spirit lurking.
This revelation made me hesitate, and I pushed open the door to the terrace. The hinges squealed with their own warning. The wall beyond was thick and low, just like any other in the Sanctum. “I won’t fall, Aster. I promise.”
The beads on Aster’s scarf jingled as she nodded and then she raced out the door.
* * *
I wrapped my cloak snug about me as I settled on the wall. The gallery terrace was wide and jutted out over the square. I said my remembrances first.
Lest we repeat history,
the stories shall be passed
from father to son, from mother to daughter,
and to all my brothers and sisters of Venda,
for with but one generation,
history and truth are lost forever.
Hear the stories of the faithful,
The whispers of the universe,
The truths that ride the wind.
I sang of braveries and sorrows and hope, seeing without eyes, hearing without ears, the ways of trust and a language of knowing buried deep within them, a way as old as the universe itself. I told them of the things that last, the things that remain, and of a dragon that was waking.
For we must not just be ready,
for the enemy without,
but also for the enemy within.
And so shall it be,
Sisters of my heart,
Brothers of my soul,
Family of my flesh,
For evermore.
A low evermore from the crowd rose up to meet me, and they began to disperse to the warmth of their homes. “And may the gods keep the wicked far from you,” I whispered to myself.
I had gathered my cloak to get down from the wall when suddenly the breeze calmed. The world grew strangely silent, muffled, and white flakes began to fall from the sky. It dusted the parapets, the streets, and my lap with a sparkle of white as it floated down in lazy circles, magical. Snow. It was a soft, cool feather brushing my cheek, exactly as Aunt Bernette had described. As the gentle flakes fell into my outstretched palm, a heavy ache grew in my chest for home. Winter was here. It felt like a door was closing.