Page 8 of Mischief Maker

Chapter Seven

Kireth

S he wants to dismiss me. Why does this make my throat close up? My hand tighten into a fist? I still have forty-two tasks to perform for her.

Only twice have I been released early. Once because the human who summoned me died—that’s an automatic release.

One moment he was tilling a field, the next moment he was dead.

The other time, my master had grown tired of my antics and felt I was doing more harm than good.

Sometimes I think that old woman was the wisest of everyone who’s summoned me.

There are now two mysteries to unravel, but I understand why Faela wants to see my backside.

I hurt her last night, that much is clear.

I wish I had done it differently, that I had explained how I wanted her to guide what happened next because the idea of lying with someone so tender troubles me.

I had hoped she would use her tasks to tell me what she desired, what would please her most, instead of my own selfish passions leading the way.

And now, the mysterious illness has returned and befallen the crops. I can see in Faela’s soft hazel eyes that this has finally broken her.

I don’t want to tell her the words. Perhaps, for the first time in my existence, I don’t want to leave.

Not without understanding what has happened here, what is killing her farm.

There is a disease, something deeper and uglier than fallow soil or poor management.

I have been caring for the crops daily, and I know that I have not made a mistake.

I cannot watch her give up, my sad girl.

“What are the words?” Faela asks again, more insistent. Her voice is stiff, her eyes red with unshed tears. “What do I need to say?”

“Perhaps you should take a few moments,” I suggest instead. “You still have many more tasks left.” I would hate for her to act rashly and then regret it.

“I don’t need them!” There’s a painful desperation in her voice, and underneath it, a simmering anger. Perhaps this is the creature I knew was lying inside her, the one hiding underneath her cowed exterior.

There is not much I can do if she truly wants to be rid of me. I can’t withhold the words from her. But perhaps I can convince her that there’s still more I can do to help.

“Are you giving up?” I ask, keeping my tone friendly, encouraging, without malice. “Are you abandoning this place?”

She turns her head away. “There’s nothing else I can do for it.

The gods are trying to tell me something, that this land is not for my use.

It’s pointless to try.” She sits down in the dirt, bringing the dead soil into her hand, letting the grains run down between her fingers.

“It’s time for me to move on. And where I’m going, I don’t need you. ”

I restrain my urge to laugh. “The gods do not care for this small plot of land. You have not earned their wrath simply by trying to exist.”

No, what’s happening here is stranger than that. It’s as if a curse has been placed upon this land, perhaps the same curse that took her mother’s life. Some sort of creeping death, intent on ruining and destroying every living thing here.

“Then what else could it be?” she asks, hurling the rest of the soil in her hand to the ground. “What great sin have I committed to bring this upon myself?”

“Perhaps nothing.”

If I have found anything in all my time on this plane, it’s that the world doesn’t always make sense. Often it is merely chance, which makes it all the more frustrating for mortals who have not come to understand their place in the great chaos.

“Nothing?” Faela raises her eyes to mine, and they are filled with her desperation, her sadness, her dashed hopes and dreams. “Are you suggesting it’s all just happenstance?”

I shrug. “Wrong place, wrong time.” I don’t know what would cause a deeper illness, or what anyone could possibly do to fix it. “That doesn’t mean you should give up.”

Anger flashes across her face. “I have never given up,” she says harshly. “I have tried and tried, but it doesn’t matter. At some point, persistence becomes foolishness. It’s time for me to end this and start over somewhere else.”

I don’t like this idea, not when I’ve worked hard here, harder than I’ve ever worked for a mortal. I would be loath to walk away now. I’m not ready to give up yet, not when my heart and body still yearn for her. Not when the sickness here eludes my understanding.

I wonder if, perhaps, there is more I can do. Beyond task after task, might my power serve an even greater purpose to fix what has been broken here?

And would I offer that power to her?

Though my mouth hesitates on the answer, that innermost, knowing part of me has already decided. I will not return to my temple yet, not while I can still make a difference here. Perhaps I can turn the tide and undo some of the pain that’s been brought down upon this one girl.

“Give me a chance,” I say, rising off the fence. “Let me try to fix this.”

Faela groans in frustration. “It can’t be fixed. You have already done the best that you can, and it wasn’t enough.” Her gaze drops to her lap, to her tightly clasped hands and her white, strained knuckles. “I don’t know what else you could do. It is hopeless, Kireth.”

My name on her lips sends a shiver through me.

I crouch in the dirt in front of her and, with the utmost care and caution, reach for her cheek. I cannot stand to look at her so despondent, so empty of hope, when she has shown so much strength and determination. She startles but doesn’t pull away.

“Let me try.” Looking her in the eyes, I stroke my thumb over her cheekbone, and she trembles underneath it. What a hunger she has, my little lion, my sad girl. She wants more than all of this, and I would like to give it to her. “Just ask.”

“What should I ask for?” Her voice is a tremulous whisper.

“To find the answer for you. Ask, and I will search until I cannot search any longer.” I would walk to the end of the earth to seek the truth and then confront it if it meant she might not give up.

Faela’s breath hitches. “You would do this?” she asks, disbelieving but ever so slightly hopeful. “You would do that for me?”

“Never have I met a task I could not complete.” I hold up a finger. “Now ask.”

I want her to accept my offer, but I will not do it unless she asks.

She must want my help still, otherwise I will give her the words and return to my temple until I am completely forgotten, and then I will fade beyond memory and go to oblivion.

Perhaps what she truly wants is to abandon this place that holds so much misery, so many terrible memories, and to forge a new life elsewhere.

I would not blame her after all that she’s seen here.

“Will you ask?” I remain kneeling at her side. “Or will you leave?”

She looks around us at the crumbling fences, the rickety house with the collapsing roof, the rows upon rows of dying plants. What she sees there, I do not know.

“I don’t want to go.” She dips her head, hiding her face with her hair. “This is my home.”

“Then ask me, sad girl.” I hold firm. I will not do this unless she spends a task. Those are the rules.

“Kireth.” She brings her eyes firmly to mine. “Please find out why my land is dying.”

I mark a tally in the air. “Forty-one.”

Without any more words between us, I turn and skip away. I must think of how I will solve this mystery, what path will lead me closer to saving this farm. But to discover a cure, I must first learn the cause.

After wandering all around the house, exploring my options, I decide there is only one being who would have the knowledge to understand what has happened here.

I am not pleased at the idea of summoning her, but she will surely know what I’m facing.

“I will be gone for many days,” I tell Faela that afternoon, now that I know where I need to go and what I must do.

She shakes her head and gives me a wan smile. “I understand. Thank you.” Again, I don’t need her thanks, but neither do I chastise her. “Travel safely. Would you like to take some cheese and meat with you?”

“I don’t need to eat,” I remind her. Not that I mind eating all that lovely fresh cheese, and the figs and cherries she brought back from the market when she sold the tiller, but she should save it for rainier days.

“Right. Of course.” Faela packs a bag of food anyway and drapes it over my arm. “Just in case.”

I find that I don’t want to leave her for the time it will take me to reach the temple and return, but this is the errand she’s asked me to go on.

So I set off into the valley, heading toward the sun and away from my temple. Unlike Faela, I am not bound by how fast my horse can travel, so I set off at a quick run and soon, I leave the village far behind me.

That night, I sleep high in a tree, slung between two branches.

I hope that my sad girl was able to finish the chores today without me.

When I remember the softness of her hair under my hand, my cock snaps to attention, and I’m forced to pump out a full, sticky white load in the middle of the woods before I can fall asleep.

Without a soft bed to rest on, I move slower the next day, so I draw lightly on my well of magic to speed up my pace. I will refill it when I return home.

Home.

That is a strange word, and not one I’ve ever used to refer to a place that is not my temple.

And yet somehow, in the last few weeks, that rickety house and the hard bed have become my own.

I’ve grown accustomed to waking up to Faela’s voice as she calls to Petal out in the field, and without it, I feel strange. Different. Not quite like myself.

I wonder what has happened to me.

At the end of the second day, the smell of the sea tells me I’m close to my destination. My mother’s temple lies high on a cliff overlooking the ocean, where her husband, my father, once ruled. I believe he has already gone on to oblivion, forgotten by the sailors who once prayed to him.