“Daughter,” he spoke, and there was such gravity in his voice.
I felt myself go very still, felt my throat close up but not from having been choked by Starling moments before. It was because I recognized it. Despite always praying to Mother Earth over him, despite my denials, despite my not understanding my penchant, I knew it was him.
“Father,” I replied, and I heard the brink of weeping in that one word. “Am I dead?”
He shook his head, and little sparks flew from him at the movement. “Not yet. There is yet time. You are here because I would ask for your forgiveness.”
I did not know what to say.
“I am the weakest of the four of us,” he went on. “So singular in my powers. I can only warm you and help you shape metal. I am not my beloved sibling who fills your lungs and makes your feet, hearts, and minds swift. I am not my sister who bathes you and rids you of thirst. I am not my other sister who stretches herself so thin across the world, there is little of her left. I have done my best. I was the first the fates cut down when they came here. And so, I have always felt I had little to offer but light and heat. I tried to be there for you in the box. I tried to warm you. The fates constrained us all, but they kept me farthest away. I am the most restrained.”
“You saved me,” I burst out. “On the banks of the Oberlong.”
He smiled, a flicker of flames taking on the shape of lips. “You saved yourself. Such a good, clever, marvelous, angry girl.”
I began to weep. His words, words that I had seldom heard in my life, full of approval and pride, were more than I could bear. I asked him, “What do I do? We are outnumbered. We are losing.”
He pointed to my chest and then my head. “The answers are within you. My own words are cut off by the fates. I can only speak in guidance, not in answers. I wish I were a better father. I wish I could have the strength to have protected you more. Perhaps this last effort will grant me your grace. Let us find the answer together now.”
“I know you were there,” I keened out, my sobs heavy in my mouth. “I knew it. I thought it was Mother Earth, but it was you.”
He nodded. “Think of what you know of the fates.”
I scrubbed at my eyes and tried to think. “They came to this world and cut your children off from your magic and lessened the magic some of the children had. And a drop of blood is still enough to awaken some magic.”
“And what do you know of Fear?”
I went to pace but remembered that all I could really see was the floor, the table, and the box. On this surreal plane, wherever I was, I had nowhere to go. When I turned, I saw the box and looked away as I always had in church. I turned back to the burning god, who, despite being made of swirls of white and orange heat, seemed to have kind eyes that were trained on me.
“Ah, alright then,” I began, wiping at the corner of one eye. “The Life of Una. Fear is the most powerful of the fates, second only to their king. Fear was bitter he did not get to break the air god. The other fates broke you and Mother Earth and Sister Sea, but Brother Air was unbreakable. Because you cannot break what is formless.”
“Keep going,” said Father Fire.
I cast my mind toThe Life of Unaand what I could remember about that passage of the ancient princess’s understanding of the origins of the known world.
The god wanted their children to know they were not abandoned. They borrowed a bit of their brother’s light.
Aloud, I said, “When he went to feed on Brother Air, they borrowed a bit of your light. And when his tongue licked the air god, it burned him.”
‘It burns! My king, the zephyr has scorched me! My tongue!’
I had not read the book in so long, had only lovingly stroked it like a good luck charm, had only held it to my chest on nights when I missed Avery. The second copy—which had appeared on my doorstep the morning after they burned all of the books, both mine and the other Sheridan women’s—I had hidden away, fearful of losing it a second time. I was desperately trying to remember Fear and the air god’s confrontation.
“Fear cannot understand this,” I rambled on, watching my god burn before me, his proud head dipping in encouragement.
“And Brother Air said Fear had tasted the hearts and minds of Tintarian children. And then Fear tells Brother Air that he hasrepeatedly destroyed worlds with his making souls fear what they don’t understand.”
“What is the last of it?” the man made of flame asked.
“Brother Air says, ‘I gave them the best of me.’ Then there is something about the wind in the woods and the flame in the night meeting and defeating Fear. But I can’t remember the rest!” I felt myself on the edge of despair.
The god then asked, “What god blesses the man you love?”
I blinked. He meant Reed, but that word “love” had thrown me. “Air.”
“What did my sibling do when they wanted their children to know they were not abandoned?”
“‘They borrowed a bit of their brother’s light,’” I quoted. “I—I don’t understand. Please! Help me!”
