The creature swelled, whisking its needle nails together in a pleased-sounding susurration.
“If you insist,” it said with pride.
In the end, Emma coaxed it to repeat the puzzle three times.
“So:coat of amber burning.The fox claw. I take it and become a fox again.”
The creature crowed.
“The obsidian feather. That’s thenightwinged eyes.Crow?”
“Not allowed to give clues,” it said. “The other once-a-mortals didn’t get them. Not allowed to have favorites.” But it winked at Emma and shook its head broadly.
“Not crow? Similar, then… raven?”
The creature grinned.
The fin in the crystalline drop stumped her, and led to many pantomimed headshakings from the creature as her guesses missed the mark.
“Snaking through the river’s bends—but I’ve gone through the fish I can remember.” Her memories were still a blur, that was the problem. “Unless—it’s not a regular fish at all?Snaking.Eel—is it an eel?”
The creature was almost hopping up and down with excitement.
The teeth were much easier to guess. “Rat,” she said, and that was that.
“House of Foxes, House of Ravens,
House of Rats and House of Eels:
Each Lower House owes loyal labor.
And one of them your choice shall be!”
chanted the creature, clearly in high spirits.
What would it be like to fly? To breach the clouds with her wings? To breathe under water and tumble through the silken currents of the river? It shouldn’t have meant much, not beneath the shadow of a hundred years’ servitude. Besides, she had just regained her own shape. The itch of an unasked-for fox pelt still rippled across her skin. She ought not to have felt anything like a thrill in her fingertips, in the veins of her chest. But from the few memories of mortal life that had returned, she knew herself. Knew that to see the world in an animal’s form, to live among them and know their secrets, was a dream closer to the essence of who she was than anything else. But something obvious was nagging at her.
“Four houses,” she said. “Five pedestals. What of the glowing ball? You missed it. What choice is that?”
The translucent film flickered over the creature’s eyes: once, twice more.
“Ah, that,” it said carefully. “That is a different choice. By this choice, you will be made mortal.”
“Mortal?” Emma’s head swung to the pedestal.
But the little creature hopped in front of her, nails shivering like striplings in a gale.
“Those who walk the path of power
Wear the gift of mortal skin:
They shall owe no gift of service,
But only that which lies within.”
Emma gazed at the ball, lost in the swirl of its fires. Mortal again. No hundred years of service. She saw her hand closing around it, saw the fire leaking through her veins, scouring them of whatever strange magic the Night City had touched her with. She saw home.
The sound of the creature’s nails reached a clashing crescendo. It was almost vibrating with the effort to keep its mouth shut.
