FJOLAR AND I NAPPED TOGETHER AFTER, IN THE NEST OF our discarded clothes. It was so warm that our skin dried quickly, moisture wicking off into the air. Once we left the water, the languor settled over me like a weight; tucked into the curve of Fjolar’s body, I was asleep before I even registered my head settling into the pillowed crook of his arm.
The sleep was dark and dreamless, a satin black I wound around myself like a tangle of bedsheets. I might not have woken for hours or even days—or whatever passed for that amount of time in this place—had something sharp not scratched insistently at my face.
I woke blearily, and slow, squinting into a sky that hadn’t shifted even a shade away from its gilded twilight streamers. It gave me a lurching sense of lost balance that I’d only felt once before, in the bone desert. We were usually on the move long before I felt any visceral wrongness at the sky’s unchanging state, the absence of markers for the passage of time.
The owl sat on my chest, blinking at me. She was raven black this time, with a star of white blazing on the down of her throat and belly, her eyes still a striated golden and jade. One of her talons hovered in midair, as if she had been preparing to poke me again.
She struck me as a very authoritative kind of owl.
“Hello again,” I said to her, giving in to a jaw-popping yawn. I was still so tired, steeped in fatigue. Yet I felt an urgent pull to stay awake—especially when I saw Fjolar still asleep next to me with a fist curled under his chin, eyelids twitching as if he were held fast by a dream. He’d never seemed anything other than vibrantly awake to me before. Even when I stole naps next to him, I always drifted off alone beneath his wakeful gaze.
“Does Death sleep?” I asked the owl. She cocked her head to the side and gave a startlingly emphatic hoot. “Right, I didn’t think so, either. So what’s this about? Does it have something to do with you?”
She ruffled up her feathers, then picked her way daintily to the ground. I’d never seen an owl walk before, but her waddle was neater than I’d have expected, more elegant. And the perky flare of her tail feathers waggling back and forth was actually kind of cute. At the very edge of the path that led down from the Devil’s Punchbowl, where it dipped to the trail that wended around the cliff, she turned and waited, exuding an air of politely restrained impatience.
“You want me to come with you, really?” Shaking off my stupor, I worked my way sluggishly up to my feet. I’d had to lift Fjolar’s arm from where it draped over me, and he hadn’t even twitched when I set it back down, heavy as a log. Something beyond the pale was definitely happening here. Death, captive to sleep. “This is like every childhood fantasy I ever had, I hope you know that.”
Three slow, skeptical blinks.
“I get it, I’m coming.” I pulled my black tank top over my head and tugged on my jeans, worked my feet into my sneakers. “All right, ready when you are.”
She spread her wings and led.
I followed her down the path in cautious fits and starts as she wheeled above me, afraid to stumble and twist my ankle or snap a bone. Aside from the sound of water dashing itself into the pool at the falls’ base, the silence was absolute, like a domed bell jar had been lowered over the two of us. I hadn’t been by myself since Fjolar brought me here, and the absence of his presence and his voice was unsettling. As much as I wanted to relish being alone, I’d grown so used to him by my side, his hand always in mine.
Now, I missed both those things. I missed him.
The dismay of being away from him was distracting enough that I nearly didn’t notice our descent into a grove that definitely hadn’t been there before.
When Fjolar and I had first crossed over into this piece of the kingdom, there had been nothing to see but the loom and crash of the waterfall, like a natural citadel surrounded by green plains. That meant this thicket had to be something new, something recently grafted onto his domain. Even the grass inside it was a different shade of green, and the trees within were deciduous and dense, the kind of tall that came with ancient.
As soon as she crossed into the grove, the owl became a woman. There was no wavering of physical boundaries, no obvious transformation. It was more as if she’d been a woman all along, just as she now continued to be an owl.
Once I stepped over the threshold of this haven that manifestly belonged to her, she turned to face me, smiling in the most affectionate, benevolent way. Like I imagined an aunt might look at a favorite niece, one who’d spent a long time away but was no less loved for it. She wore crimson robes loosely belted at the waist, with nothing beneath them, the fabric a few shades brighter than the auburn waves of hair that cascaded nearly past her wide, round hips.
Her face was bold and pleasant without being beautiful: freckled cheeks, squared jaw, and a no-nonsense sort of nose. The kind of face Mama would have dismissed as “handsome”—though there was nothing about this woman that would brook dismissal.
Her eyes hadn’t changed from the owl’s gold-and-green, and her pupils had remained huge, black, and deep.
She held out both hands to me. Bracelets of braided metal circled both wrists, along with corsages of what looked like sprigs of holly and mistletoe, though the leaves weren’t quite the right shape for either.
I laid my palms on hers—dry and warm, a little rough from work—and she gave them a firm squeeze, wrinkling her nose in greeting like a mischievous schoolgirl. She smelled like sage and sandalwood, along with the sharp sweetness of mint. I could recognize the hum of power by now, from Dunja’s crackling ozone and Mara’s clustered bells, and this woman had it in heaps and spades. Yet there was nothing aggressive about whatever she wielded, nothing that suggested violence or a demand.
“Well met, love,” she said, still smiling. Her voice was rich and low, bright with the brink of laughter. Her brow was tattooed in dark blue, a full moon bracketed by waxing and waning phases on either side. The top of her head flickered every now and then, like a heat mirage. I kept thinking I saw a pair of massive, branching antlers draped with moss, but every time I focused on them I found nothing there. “You’ve led me on quite the chase in this swirling little maze. But I’m glad to have this time with you now, without him in tow. And look at you, so shining and lovely. Certainly one of hers, no two ways about it.”
“Thank you?” I hazarded. “One of Mara’s, do you mean?”
“I do,” she confirmed. “Though of course, you’re one of mine, too.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m known by many names, some freely shared and others oath-bound,” she replied serenely. “If you need some way to think of me, the Lady of the Dawn will do. Now, why are you still here?”
“Still here?” I couldn’t keep the indignation from my voice; she made it sound like I had a choice in it. “Because he brought me here, and doesn’t know how to let me out. So I’m not ‘still here’ so much as stuck, I’d say.”
The Lady arched an eyebrow, her gaze turning sharp beneath it. “I wouldn’t call it ‘stuck,’ love, and nor should you, if you abide by truth at all. What’s a prison like this to a might like yours, one who shares her far-mother’s infinite bloom? This world might be a lockbox, yes. But what is that, other than a thing held together by glue, and nails, and clasps? It may have been built with you in mind, but it was never built to hold you back.”
“You’re saying I could get out of here?” My heart began to pound painfully. “That it’s up to me somehow?”
“Of course it is. It’s always been. The only one telling you otherwise is him.” She made a little moue of distaste. “While I understand that her need was great, I will say I don’t approve of what she made of him. Things of his nature aren’t meant to dwell in flesh.”
“But he says he doesn’t know any way out, not for someone here in body as well as soul,” I protested.
“And he’s always been so straight with you, has he?” she replied tartly, tossing back her copper hair. The sometimes-antlers on her head appeared just long enough to catch the light before they winked out. “Nary a lie out of that one, I’m sure. A paragon of honesty.”
“You’re saying he’s lying to me even now? Even still?” The pain that bloomed at that prospect climbed up my throat like a creeper rose, lined with thorns. “So what else are you saying? I assume you know there’s a soul hidden here, that I need to find. I can’t leave before I do that, anyway, and we—I—still have no idea where it is.”
Her nostrils flared with frustration. “You already know more than enough about this world to find what you need, if only you’d seek higher ground, observe the greater scale of things. I can’t tell you more than that—this is his domain, and I overstep merely by being here—but goodness, girl. Think on it. Even he’s given you enough to work with, and now I’ve done what I can.”
I racked my brain for any hint of understanding, and still came up short. “I just don’t see any greater scale . . . ,” I began, balling my hands in frustration and smacking one against my thigh.
Her face softened into sympathy. “Maybe it is a lot to ask,” she conceded. “You may be of her rarefied golden blood, but you’re also a very human, very tired girl. Why don’t you come and rest with me a bit? I’ve been known to make some burdens lighter. Would you like to stay a spell, here with me?”
I found that I would, that I craved her continued presence. She felt like lingering summer in September, like the satisfaction of full larders before the fall of winter. “Yes, please, if you don’t mind . . . ,” I said, nearly finishing the sentence with a name that balanced like a sugar cube at the tip of my tongue before melting away, leaving only a faint sweetness behind.
A different name; her real name, not the placeholder she’d given me.
The Lady turned with a swirl of crimson robes, and strode deeper into the leafy enclave of the grove. Each step of her bare feet was both balanced and precise, and I noticed that her soles were caked with rich, red soil.
She crossed from tree to tree, as if considering, before stopping in front of one with a slim, dark trunk and full canopy, its branches heavy with a crop of bloodred berries—just like the ones around her wrists. She trailed her palms fondly over the bark, then slid down its length to sit cross-legged where the roots snaked into the soil.
“Rowan, one of my very favorites,” she said, patting the trunk behind her as if it were a pet. “Sometimes also called mountain ash, or quicken tree. Powerfully protective, but also good for inspiration. Sitting beneath its crown with me might be exactly what you need. Perhaps something will strike you.”
She drew her robes across her thighs and patted her lap in invitation, the slant of sunlight through the leaves casting lacy shadows across her face. I knelt down next to her, leaning against the rowan for support. The bark scraped rough against my palm like any other tree, but beneath that it did feel a little like what she’d said.
A buzz of something ferociously protective, and a sense of something both gentle and fortifying.
She patted her lap again, and, like a little girl, I scooted down and rested my head along her soft, robed thigh. For a blessed moment, the knot of constant tension I carried with me, threaded through the fretwork of my being, loosened to nearly nothing. I released breath after peaceful breath, letting myself relax.
“That’s it,” she soothed, laying a light, warm hand down on my hair. “You’re already halfway there, love, you just don’t quite know it yet.”
I made a noncommittal little sound, burrowing against her thigh. Wherever I was or wasn’t yet, all I wanted was for her to keep stroking my hair. And she did, in steady, even circles, like a mother at a bedside rubbing her baby’s back—exactly like my mother had done for me, when Lina and I were still little and Mama was still sweet.
The motion and the memory altered my perspective just slightly, like the shadow from a sundial shifting.
Mothers.
Circles.
Spirals.
Gifts.
And just like that, I understood what she had wanted me to know.
I WAS SO furious with Fjolar that I lingered at the waterfall’s base long after the grove behind me had vanished, melting away into nothing like an oasis in a desert mirage. It had been here only while the Lady was here, and once she was gone, no trace of it stayed behind.
She was right about one thing: I didn’t need to know who she was to understand what she’d come to tell me. Had my thinking been unmuddied by the meddlesome magic of this place, and the beginnings of a more genuine love, I should have been able to piece it together from what he’d told me himself.
This kingdom was made in my image, he kept saying, from the likeness of my mind. Every story he had told me linked it to things I loved. Everything in it carried relevance, a glimmering line of connection winding back to me.
That being the case, I should long since have guessed its shape.
But before I brought this to him, I had to be sure I was right. I needed to find higher ground, she’d said. I needed the perspective of height.
Now that I was clear of the Lady’s bower and outside of the sphere of Fjolar’s stilling influence, the kingdom resumed its tumult around me—or my senses resumed their suspended revolt. The pounding of the waterfall grew horribly loud, a violent, compounded crash like the falling water might thunder apart the basin. The temperate air turned too warm, and the ruddy gold of the sky became searingly bright. Summoning the bloom would be easier in the Quiet, so I shaded my eyes against the glare and searched for a seam, a boundary that marked a passage point to another piece of the kingdom.
But I couldn’t find one, and I didn’t feel strong enough to go looking. I had the feeling that I’d be needing all my strength soon; best to start conserving it. And with nowhere to hide from so much light and sound, right where I stood would be as good as anywhere.
I half sat, half collapsed onto the ground, wincing at the stab of prickly grass. Closing my eyes and reaching inside, I found the gathered coil of the wisteria, waiting like a rope ladder for me to fling it out.
Up, I demanded. Take me higher, lift me up.
At my urging, the blossoms emerged easily, almost eagerly. I’d been getting a lot of practice out of spinning them into a cradle in the Quiet. Like every time, I knit them with my mind, blooming branch over branch into a pink-and-purple lattice, plaiting their twigs and flowers into sturdy rungs. It shot upward under my guidance, like Jack’s beanstalk twisting toward the giants.
With a crackling snap, the ladder solidified. It hung above me, suspended from nothing, swaying with the weight of its own branches and the spiraling corkscrews of its blossoms. I didn’t need to climb it with my body; even here, the shell of me could stay behind. All I needed to traverse the framework that I’d built was the nimble scurry of my mind.
Launching, I scaled up and up, high enough that I left the waterfall far below me and behind. Glancing down without fear—even if I let go, the receptacle of my body waited to catch me and break my fall—I could see the speck of Fjolar still curled beside the steaming water of the Devil’s Punchbowl. How fitting that he would choose a place with a name like that; he’d even admitted it himself.
He spent so much time telling me what he was, and I spent just as much choosing not to hear it.
This high up, the fabric of this cobbled-together world began to fray. I wasn’t climbing closer to an outer level of the atmosphere, because this wasn’t my earth and there wasn’t one here. No clouds wisped around me, nothing but a trailing gray haze. The kingdom fanned out below me like a twisted chessboard, every square a different color, size, and shape. And the board itself wasn’t a board, but a spiral swirling to a central point—from up here it looked both surpassingly strange and achingly familiar. The separate pieces were poured into this mold like pearls, each encased in a filmy, white layer that must have been the seam of Quiet threaded all around and between, stitching them together and keeping them separate.
All together, it took the shape of a coiled-up snake, a nautilus shell, or a furled flower bud.
A natural fractal.
And exactly like my birthday cake—the Sacher torte roulade Mama had once baked me, to echo the flavors of the bougainvillea I had blown for her.
I could almost recognize the pieces that we had visited, based on the shades and contours I saw from here. The ones on the very outside of the kingdom could only lead to the neighboring three pieces: whichever lay behind, in front, and toward the inside. With every tier closer to the center, the more pieces each one abutted. From any single one, we could have reached at least four others.
Fjolar could have waltzed me back and forth between them for months or years, maybe for decades, hopscotching through the kingdom at his whim. I would never have known if he was leading me toward the center.
A center that I could see, even from up here, pulsing with a distinctive, silvery light. That was where the soul would be.
Where he could have taken me from the beginning.