Page 20 of Mischief Maker

Chapter Seventeen

Kireth

I ’m stuck here.

I can’t return to the house with the sagging roof. I can’t tend to the crops, or pet Petal’s head, or taste my Faela’s delicious cunt.

I can’t go home .

Her hands cling tight to mine. “That can’t be right,” she says, taking a step closer to Lucia. “He has to be able to come with me. I came all this way for him. You sent me here! You told me I could get him back!”

She is fierce, my Faela. But all the life has drained out of me. There is no defying oblivion.

“I did, didn’t I?” says Lucia thoughtfully. She rubs her chin, tilting her head. “Perhaps, if Kireth were mortal like you, he could step through the door.”

Faela stomps her foot. “But he’s not! We all know that. He’s...” She turns to me. “He’s a god.”

Then it occurs to me what my mother is trying to say.

“If I were to give up immortality...” I bring Faela tight against my side. “Could I go then?”

Lucia’s face transforms into a smile. “I knew I’d created you to have quicker wits than that,” she says proudly. Then her tone grows more serious. “You could. You would be shackled to a mortal life, Kireth. You would grow old and die, as you never have.”

Faela is speechless. I wonder what it would be like to get old. To age as mortals do, to watch my body change and deteriorate, to look death in the eyes and fall into it.

“Kireth,” Faela whispers. “You can’t.” Her hand clenches mine tight.

I squeeze hers back. “But I can.”

Yes, I can stay with my farm girl for as long as our short lives will allow. I can love her until she’s old and gray and we have a different dog with a different name.

“And I will give it up,” I say with a certainty. “I will throw my immortality away, if it means we can go home.”

My mother gives me a sad smile. “I thought that might be what you chose.”

“But you would lose everything!” Faela’s eyes are red with unshed tears. “You would die someday. You would become?—”

“Like you?” I push some of her rogue brown hair behind her ear. “I can imagine no better thing.”

Tilting her chin up, I lean down and brush my lips over hers in a brief, gentle promise of what might come later. Her pulse speeds up under my hand at just this small touch. How wonderful it will be to spend a lifetime teasing her this way.

Behind us, Terano shakes his head. “Lucia,” he chides. “Always playing your games, even with your children.”

“Hmph.” She waves him off. “It worked, didn’t it? Now Kireth.” She puts one hand on each of my shoulders. “After this, you will walk through these doors and never return. When you die, you will go to the place all mortals do. We won’t see you again.”

I think that perhaps there are even some unshed tears in her eyes.

With a nod, I say, “I understand.”

Lucia tilts her head back and begins to hum. The air vibrates around us. I feel a sudden slackening in my muscles, as if the energy is being drained out of them. Faela gasps and rushes to my side as I fall over, boneless. It’s as if my spirit is being drawn out through my mouth.

“Kireth!” Faela cries out.

My mother holds up her hand, and in it, there is a small, swirling ball of light. She blows on it, as if sending off a dandelion seed, and the light winks out.

Already, I can feel the creep of death on me—but it doesn’t frighten me the way I thought it would. When I look down, my skin is no longer the gray of stone, but a light brown, full of flesh and blood.

“Are you all right?” Faela asks, helping me back to my feet.

“I’m fine now.” I smile fully at her, at the girl I’ve chosen and who was chosen for me. “Let’s go home.”

I give my mother a kiss on the hand, and my father slaps my shoulder.

“I’m glad I got to see you before the end,” Terano says. “Now go. Live your mortal life.”

“Oh, I will.” I anticipate with glee all the things I can do with it.

When I pull on the door handles, they open wide for us. Taking Faela’s hand in mine, I tug her over the threshold.

The moment we step through, the doors fall shut behind us with a resounding clang! Then, all of oblivion disappears behind us.

We are free.

Faela

My immortal has chosen a life with an expiration date—for me. I don’t think there’s ever been such a declaration of love as that.

He has changed, too. His skin is a bright bronze, his hair as dark as before, but the ends are now tipped with sunlight. His horns and tail remain.

It’s a long way back the way I came. I just hope that Lucia was right, and we’ll return to the mortal plane where I came from.

At the bottom of the mountain, the farm and the village are gone.

We walk through the endless yellow grasses, taking our time, relishing being together again.

After much teasing and giggling, Kireth rolls me up in his arms and we fall to the ground together, our tongues dancing, our limbs exploring each other as if we’ve been separated for years.

He pulls up my dress and pleasures me with his mouth, then slides his cock inside me like it was meant to fit there.

I moan his name and he clutches me close, taking his time, prying one climax from my body after another.

We fall asleep like that, lying in the cloud-soft grasses, curled around each other.

When I wake up, it’s because a wet tongue is swiping across my face.

“Petal?”

The dog’s tail frantically wags as I sit up and wipe my cheek. Kireth’s eyes open, and he rubs them with both fists.

We’re lying in the sheep field, just down the hill from the house. The sky is darkening, and I’m relieved to see the sun moving across the sky after my short stay in the house that wasn’t mine, with the mother that wasn’t mine, either.

“We’re home,” I breathe. “Lucia brought me back like she promised.”

“She might be a little naughty, but she never lies.” Kireth stretches his arms like a cat, as if we’ve just woken from a most relaxing nap. His smile grows as he surveys the land around us. “Just like you left it.”

It looks like less than a day on the farm has passed since I “died” and came back to life.

Quickly, we feed the animals, who are restless after being cooped up, and attend to the crops.

We’re exhausted from playing catch-up by the time night falls, and Kireth grumbles at how much faster he gets tired.

Under the starry sky that night, Kireth and I sit together on the front steps of our home.

“Is it strange?” I ask. “Knowing there are no more gods?”

He shrugs as he sips some wine. “Our time was past. The world is changing. Soon, it will touch even this place, you know—we won’t be able to avoid all those newfangled inventions they have down in the valley. It might even make our lives easier.”

I don’t like this thought. I want a simple life here, rebuilding the farm and the house and the barn, lying in the grass under the perfect darkness of night.

“I can’t believe an ancient god is telling me to modernize,” I grumble.

He kisses my cheek and offers me some more wine. “Who knows? Maybe it will make us even happier.”

The next morning, Kireth brings his hands to the base of a plant and starts to imbue it with his magic, intent on hurrying the harvest.

But nothing happens. His eyebrows crease, and he concentrates even harder.

“Why isn’t it working?” He sits down in the dirt, tail slapping the ground with frustration.

I kneel next to him. “Your magic must have been tied to your immortality.” I put an arm around his shoulders and run my hand through his wild hair, to the base of his horn. “But we don’t need it anymore. You don’t need it anymore.”

Kireth sighs a deep, weary sigh, and leans into me. “I suppose I’ll have to just rely on the water and the sun and the soil to do the work.”

“Just like mortals have since the beginning of time,” I say with a chuckle.

He shudders. “Mortal. I’m going to have to get used to that.”

When we’re finished with our work, we eat fresh berries and bread, cheese and wine to celebrate returning from the land of the dead with our hides intact. Soon my head is warm and fuzzy, and Kireth swings me up into his arms to carry me up the stairs.

He sways, nearly toppling over.

“Oops. You’re a lot heavier when I don’t have magic to help me.”

I giggle. “Welcome to being human.”

We fall into a pattern of life again: I see to the livestock, and Kireth tends to the crops.

Every evening, we cook together and eat together, and Kireth likes to feed me blackberries and strawberries right from the basket.

We repair the house and the fences, and with an extra pair of hands, we’re able to expand the fields in use for farming, too.

I am wary of the curse that still lives in a wooden box in our home, so we go on a journey to the forest down below the mountain. Here, Kireth says goodbye to his temple for good, where he will never return.

Then we bury the box deep in the dirt, hoping it will remain there, undiscovered, for the rest of time.

Kireth

I never could have imagined a life like this for myself. Even without my magic, it’s a bliss that’s almost beyond my understanding.

My sweet farm girl, with her twinkling hazel eyes and soft waves of brown hair, occupies every last corner of my heart.

How I love watching her with a newborn lamb in her lap, or training one of the new dogs to round up cattle.

In the winter, we plant crops to rejuvenate the soil, and spend many long, cold days inside finding new and inventive ways to warm ourselves up.

As the seasons pass, so do we both get older. It’s a strange and foreign thing to feel my body get tired earlier, to watch the wrinkles appear on my Faela’s face, to see them on my own in the mirror.

But I don’t regret a single minute of it. I hope that when we die, we get to do it side by side, just as we lived.