“The imbalance must be repaired,” I stated simply. “Topia is dying. Minatsol is dying. One has taken for too long from the other.” Cyrus joined me on one side, and I found myself turning to him. “This is why you built your home near the banishment cave,” I said, feeling somewhat certain of that fact. The more my power filled me, the more in touch with it and the land I was becoming. “Because you knew there was an imbalance there; something you needed to fix.”
He nodded. “Yes, but I never knew how without destroying everything. So I remained where I was, watching … waiting.”
My eyes lifted again. The darkness swirled, but it didn’t move.
“Have I contained them?” I asked.
It was the only thing that made sense to me. The curtain I’d rolled up had trapped the wraiths within the folds, keeping them from spreading.
“Try and will the darkness somewhere,” Cyrus suggested. “See if you can move it.”
The mass above us was huge, easily the size of ten marble platforms. I decided to see if I could just shift it a few dozen feet further away from us, toward the snow.
It didn’t move.
“I think it’s trapped within the garden,” a breathy female voice said from close by, and I turned my head to find Pica there, her jewels even more blinding up close. “It loves the garden.”
“It’s got to be a combination of Willa’s Creation and the garden’s ancient magic that allows her to contain them,” Aros said, his lips pressed into firm lines. He looked pretty upset and I hoped that there was nothing else going on that I didn’t know about.
“Do you think this is a good time to ask the gods if they want to side with us?” I asked half-jokingly.
“I’m surprised they haven’t all stepped through a pocket and disappeared,” Emmy snort-laughed. “Because this is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“No pockets,” Rome said shortly. “We’re all blocked. Cyrus has forbidden everyone … and he’s pretty good at enforcing rules.”
A flapping sound drew my attention—for some reason I heard it before everyone else, but within a few clicks, all the gods were watching the large herd of panteras descending on us.
Leden!I thought happily. Her reply came almost instantly.
Willa, release the souls!
I coughed, trying to figure out if I’d misheard her.Release them? That might end the world.
The panteras landed in the snow field beyond our garden, beyond the darkness above.
It is not our place to interfere,Leden replied.But these souls are already harming the land. They are harming us all. They are being tortured, tied to a world they don’t belong in. If you want to stop the cycle of pain, you will need to release them. Trust that they will find their way. Trust that those freed from pain will not wish to inflict more. Trust the nature of the souls that once were.
The panteras didn’t come any closer, but Leden’s familiar shiny coat came into view as she stepped forward from the others.
We are here as their final guides,her voice told me, and her words from only a moment ago entered my head again.
“They can’t interfere,” I muttered. “But they can guide.”
My chest got tight then, just knowing that the wraiths wouldn’t be trapped any longer. It filled me with the sort of emotion I wasn’t sure I’d experienced before. I’d never worshipped the gods, not in the same way that most sols and dwellers did, but I did feel a spiritual urge to release the wraiths.
Why did you never free them yourselves?I asked Leden.
That would have been interfering,she said simply.
I sensed she was done talking and wanted me to get on with it, so I released my hold on the darkness. The curtain I’d rolled up unravelled quickly, but the darkness didn’t drop over our eyes like before. I’d contained the wraiths in the sky, and it was there they stayed for a few clicks, swirling around with flashes of brilliant colour. Now that they were no longer trapped, the beauty of their souls became clear for all to see.
The rustling of wings had me turning to find the panteras taking to the sky again. Moving as a large mass, they reached the darkness in less than a few micro-clicks. Light spread from their bodies, subtle at first but it was soon cutting through the souls and breaking them apart, freeing them in a way that I had not been able to. I might have been a Creator, but I wasn’t a source of power like the panteras or the Garden of Everlasting. They had both proven to be far stronger than me.
Did that mean the land could restore itself if enough power was returned to it? I hoped so, for everyone.
Wraiths attached themselves to the panteras, who began to lift them higher and higher. For just a moment, I got to witness the transformation of colour as the darkness seeped away and brilliant blues and greens and reds swirled around. It was hard to make out exact shapes because the sunlight soon blinded us to the final journey of the souls, and then the next thing I saw was a bright and clear sky, with no remaining hints of darkness.
The panteras appeared again, descending slowly until they landed in the snow-filled field beyond the garden. I wanted to reach out to Leden and ask her for guidance, but she had already made it clear that they weren’t able to get involved. Many times. Asking her for help now would feel like an abuse of my special connection to her. So I kept the questions from my mind and searched out Yael, who I had been doing a terrible job of keeping an eye on. After surmising that he was completely unscathed, I did a quick check of the others because I couldn’t help myself. Everyone was closing in around me, unable to spread out the way we had originally planned. Even Pica was looming close, hovering not far from Cyrus and Emmy. They were all watching me as I watched them, and I gradually became aware that the silence had grown, if possible, even more tense than before. I was confused, because the darkness had lifted and the souls had been carried away.
