Lightbringer

“I understand. Your eyes are simple, but they will not always be. Already it has begun.”

Hours passed. At last, Rielle cracked open her eyes just enough to see her feet moving shakily through the black water. The sea’s surface did not reflect the light of the stars. The waves held their own light, as if illuminated by fires that burned deep underwater.

She found her voice, hoarse from disuse. “You are the empirium, aren’t you?”

“You should open your eyes all the way and look around.” The girl’s whisper made her jump.

They had stopped moving and were now sitting in the shallow sea. Something tickled the back of Rielle’s neck, urging her face toward the sky. She fought it, though she ached to look up. If she saw whatever hung in the sky above her, she would never want to look away. Instead, she watched the warm water lap against her swollen belly.

Playful, the girl drew her hands across the waves, then smiled up at Rielle. “This is where you belong. Look up and tell me you agree. I would like you to agree.”

Rielle hesitated. The seabed pebbles were silky between her fingers, each one pulsing with the rapid patter of her heartbeat.

“Look up, won’t you?” the girl said once more. “You will not be sorry.”

Rielle could no longer resist. She lifted her gaze to the sky.

Among the stars, globes of light and rock spun slowly—some large and near, others small and distant. Stripes of color ribboned some; others were plain or murky with clouds. Rielle ached to reach up and touch them. She sat on her hands.

“What are they?” she whispered.

“They are worlds. Would you like one?”

Rielle ignored the question. “I don’t understand. My world does not look like this.”

“It would if you lived in the stars and looked down upon it. It is a pretty thing, Avitas. Green and blue and white. A gemstone streaked with clouds.”

Rielle’s heart pounded all reason out of her. She struggled to form thoughts. “Tell me: Are you the empirium?”

The girl looked disappointed. “Everything is the empirium.”

“But there must be a single place or being more powerful than the others. A place where everything began. A being that began it.”

“Must there?” The girl tilted her head. “Perhaps you are the being that began it, for you are of the empirium, and the empirium is all things. Perhaps nothing began it and it has always been.” Her bright golden eyes did not blink. “Perhaps I am the empirium, one of many that have existed, and the time has come for me to be reborn as another.”

Rielle’s breathing had grown thin. “You speak nonsense. Are you the empirium or not? Are you the thing that made us?”

“Would you try to kill me if I were? Usurp my place?” The girl’s voice had gone cold. “Your angelic lover might wish you would. His questions are pale. His sight is narrow. Without you to help him, he is insignificant.”

The girl stood, found Rielle’s hand once more. “There is more to see. You are the first in an age who has been strong enough to see me. I would like to share all of myself with you.”

Rielle gazed up as they walked, the waves sloshing around her legs. The sky was a tumult of streaking color, planes upon planes of it, as if the river of stars had fractured into facets that each now streamed in a different direction.

“If you are of the empirium,” Rielle began, “and so am I, then I’m not seeing only you. I’m seeing myself. In all of this—these stars, these worlds. I am reflected in them.”

The girl’s voice bubbled with glee. “Now you are beginning to understand. Come! Hurry!”

Rielle followed, a new deft grace in her steps. How beautiful the sky was, how glorious in its strangeness. She plunged her hand into it, drew down one of the spinning worlds. A little violet jewel, angry yellow clouds swirling across half its surface.

“Do with it as you wish,” the girl whispered. They sat at the edge of the sea, their feet dangling. Below them, a waterfall plunged silently into blackness. “Do you love it?”

Rielle examined the world, slowly rolling it back and forth between her palms. “I feel nothing for it.”

“What if beings live upon it?”

“Do they? How many?”

“Millions.”

Alarmed, Rielle released the world back into the sky. She pushed herself to her feet, watched the stars absorb it. “I wish to leave now.”

The girl frowned. “But there is so much more to see.”

“I’m tired.”

“You won’t be forever.”

Rielle’s eyes filled with tears. She could not tear her gaze from the sky. She never wanted to stop looking at it; she wanted to pluck every world from the stars and run her fingers across them until she had memorized their textures. And yet her body ached for stillness, for the warm comfort of Corien’s bed. The conflict soured her tongue, as if she had bitten into metal.

The girl stood. Her grip on Rielle’s hand was iron, her smile glittering. Rielle recognized that smile; she had worn it herself.

And she realized, with a dizzying wave of clarity, that she was speaking to the empirium, yes, but she was also speaking to the part of herself that wished to see more, to make and unmake and never stop.

“Come with me,” the girl pleaded. “You will see. We are rising, you and I. There is so much more for us to do.”

They plunged back into the sea, crossing it beneath the churning stars. The girl’s pace was swifter now. The stars and their worlds blurred into unreadable sheets of color.

Movement caught Rielle’s eye. She glanced left, saw reflections of herself and the bright-eyed girl holding her hand, the black sea at their feet, the chaos overhead. Countless reflections, infinite to the horizon. On her right, the same thing, and before her, and behind her. An infinite prism of herself. She whirled, searching, and when she called out for Corien, her terrified voice echoed against itself. Corien? The single plaintive word expanded, ripples of sound colliding until her ears rang.

“I have so many more things to show you,” said the girl, frowning. She tugged Rielle faster. “Come. This way. I’m lonely and I’m tired. It’s so nice to have a friend. Please?”

The girl’s smallness was an illusion. The force of her dragging Rielle through the water was that of ten thousand rolling storms. Rielle tried to stop, dug her heels into the soft seabed, but the sight of her reflections, all of them doing the same thing, disoriented her. She lost her balance and fell, but the girl caught her.

“Look!” The girl swept her arm across the sky. The stars halted in their roaring currents, then coalesced and shrank. Bright pearls of light dotted the emptied sky, each surrounded by a faint glow.