There was a crease in his brow. “I am held back from speaking. The fates are at their own war, even as mortal souls wage another. Hate, War, and Greed ready themselves to ravage the coast of our children’s home, poisoning their own children’s minds, seeping in, telling them they do not own enough riches or land, that folk different from them are to be feared. Here, Fear fuels the king of this land. He gives them power as they feed him in return. The other fates, those who would keep this world on an even keel, they fight this. But even those fates fight it not because it is a battle of good and evil. They play at world-making. And so Consequence and his two brethren seek fairness only because, to them, there are simply rules and this is all a game in the end.”
“And you cannot give me the answers.”
He shook his head. “You are closer than you know.”
“They say that there will always be winds and flames, that when the magic of wind and flame come together, it is a thing that will defeat Fear’s greatest power, no matter—” I stopped speaking so abruptly I began to choke. “No matter how thickly itflows!” I cried out. “The tongue river! It isincendiary.”
The god’s shoulders sank somewhat, as if he was exhaling. “Yes.”
An instant hope swelled in my breast. “That is why they are so adamant about no flames! That is why Starling was half mad with worry when Gerard’s torch fell. That is why they only brought cresset torches,closabletorches, in the tower. The very spittle of Fear’s tongue can be set ablaze. Like liquor or hot pitch!”
“My sibling’s essence, clothed in my light, set the fate’s foul spit aflame. It burned him.”
“All I need is to get to one of those torches.”
The god shook his head. “You will not get that close, daughter. There is yet more for you to know. Keep going. I ask again, what god blesses the man you love?”
I wilted somewhat and shrugged. “Air! I don’t understand.”
“Your hand,” he answered me, and it sounded like he himself was choking. “Not in this place, not in this pocket of illusion you and I stand in—back in the skull of the fate. Think of your hand.”
Now, in this pocket of illusion, as he had said, I held my hands out in front of me. They were just my hands. Then I said, “I have Reed’s blood all over my right hand?”
“Yes,” he gasped out. “Fear’s only fear is my rage joined with air’s gift of an open heart and a curious mind. What else does my sibling say about wind and flame? What other words do they use for—” He broke off his speech in a cough.
I watched him struggle, still choking, watched him burn hotter for a heartbeat in distress that he could not speak directly to me, watched him nearly flicker out for a second heartbeat, almost disappearing before flickering back to himself.
“Zephyrs and torches!” I guessed.
“You can be your own torch with the breath of the zephyr,” the god choked out. “There is no time. Open the box. You have to go back. Remember the flame you need is right before you.”
“I still don’t understand!” I cried out.
He drew himself near, so close I should have been singed, but all I felt was a warm comfort, like the blanket Brother Tibolt had laid over me nearly thirty winters ago. “You will. It will come to you. Iknow you’re scared. But the box is the way back from this place. And this place is disappearing. I’m not supposed to make worlds. I’m not supposed to speak to you. Our time is short.”
“No!” I cried. “No. I am afraid of it. Istillam.”
“I know you are. Open it though. Remember the flame is right before you.”
“What if I fail? What if I condemn us all to our deaths?”
His flames were less opaque and he was fading. “Open the box.” The god’s voice was barely above a whisper.
My cheeks were wet again. And despite the perilous straits I and others were in, despite the reassurances of a deity who loved me, I did not want to turn around and look at that box on the table. Everything hinged on it, but I did not want to do it. Lifting that lid seemed an impossible feat.
“Remember the woman who shouted at us in the forest?” Father Fire said, and his voice was so weakened but there was so much admiration in it. “She was once the girl who held her head high in church and was not cowed by grown men putting her in that box. She never abandoned herself. And she was so tiny, Robbie. If she can do it, surely you are able.”
There was a whine in my mouth, a scream of terror building. But I, eyes shut, turned and faced the table and the box. I stepped forward, a hand outstretched, realizing I had never feared the god behind me reducing me to ashes, but the plain box before me, remarkable only for its size and length, made me want to spill up my guts like I had when we discovered the tongue river.
“I never thought I would have to be here again,” I wept.
I heard him say, “You have always saved yourself, daughter. Such a good, clever, marvelous, angry girl. Do not forget. The flame you need is right there.”
My gut in my throat, bile rising, I lifted the lid. It was empty. I blinked and, surprised, as if I had expected a body or something else shocking within, I said, “It is just a box.”
And the pocket made of illusion, crafted by a god who wanted one chance to speak to his child, vanished.
91
