Page 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Fenlia

F en meets Cat at the entrance to the House of the Unwanting an hour after breakfast. At his side is the oldest Reaper Fen has ever seen, who stands gnarled and knobby, and seems weary about the eyes. They had been talking quietly as she approached, Cat murmuring words Fen did not quite hear. But when they see her, they stop speaking. She tries not to take offence, especially after the old man presses a hand to his heart and bows as best as he’s able to.

The wind blows a little as she steps in close to greet them properly. Her nose twitches. They smell really bad. Fen sniffs, discreetly rubbing her nose. She tries to be polite about it, though there is an unmissable taint of earthiness around them, which feels unnatural on a human body. Earth, dirt, mushrooms and trees. Do they even wash? It is far too impolite to ask.

‘I’m Fransen, I’ll be leading you about the gardens,’ the old man says. ‘When we come across those vines Marina wants gone . . . well, then you two will do your business, yes?’

‘I know my way around,’ Fen argues quietly. ‘And I know what stinging bark looks like. I can do it.’

‘Maybe you can, but I’m meant to chaperone, so I’m going to chaperone.’ Fransen shrugs. He says something that sounds almost like Lunae, and Cat lets out a startled noise of surprise. ‘Did I say it right?’ A subtle shake of the head, then a much more precise repetition. Let’s go, Fen translates slowly.

‘I don’t need a chaperone,’ Fen tries one last time, knowing it is futile.

‘It’s not for you.’

That has her glancing at Cat, but Cat does not bother looking her way. He ducks his head low, and his brown hair blocks out his face as they walk along the walls of Kreuzfurt. Fen’s done this circuit before, but this time she pays attention to everything. She memorizes what she sees, intending to consolidate all the information she can into the notebook she has started to keep on her desk.

Kreuzfurt has seven gardens, each with its own kind of purpose and structure, each with its own pond. The ponds vary in size, some small enough to leap over, others impossible to cross in a single bound. Dedicated farmland rests behind the Houses of the Wanting and Unwanting, and enough fruits and vegetables are planted and harvested there to export out of the city. But the gardens still host a mélange of fruits, berries and nuts of their own. One has a line of olive trees, another walnuts.

Fen and Cat follow Fransen as he walks slowly through each garden, pointing out the troublesome vines that Marina wants destroyed. ‘That one,’ he says, gesturing with the end of his walking stick. ‘See its leaves? They’re shaped like stars. And the blue is in the centre. That’s how you know it’s stinging bark.’ The vine itself is rough. Thick and corded, it otherwise blends perfectly with the texture of the tree it is wrapped around. Easily overlooked by a casual observer.

Cat pulls off one of his gloves and lightly trails his finger along the edges of one of the vine’s leaves. There is no immediate loss of life, but slowly the verdant edges and vibrant blue streaking begin to fade. Colour is sapped from the plant. Water drips to the ground as if it is wringing itself free. The leaves turn crusty and brown, and the transition spreads. From one leaf to another, one stem to another it goes, until the entire vine, from root to farthest tip, is as dry as foliage just before winter.

When it’s over, Cat steps back, letting Fen take his place. Her hands hover over the vine. A simple touch of her skin, and it would be enough for this vine to come hurtling back to life. Just as easily as Cat had killed it in the first place. Some things simply long for survival. They fight for it, leaping at the chance to return.

But she does not want to heal this vine. She wants it to burn.

With the candle, she had commanded the wax-coated string to live. But it hadn’t been alive in the same way that the vine had. It doesn’t yearn to go back to being a nuisance on a tree. Molecules, Marina had said. It isn’t the vine as it is that needs to live. It is everything that makes it whole. Fen pulls on the memory of the day before. On the feeling of the fire bursting into life. That moment of shift, that precipice. Like climbing the stairs up all twelve floors of the Houses of the Wanting or Unwanting, each step winding tension tighter until there is nowhere left for that tension to go but down.

An agonizing ascent, then a sudden freefall.

Sharp pain snaps between her fingers. She opens her eyes as the vine burns.

‘I did it . . . I did it !’ She twists towards Cat, and he smiles somewhat. Half his mouth seems to be tilting upwards while the other awkwardly trails off like an ellipsis leading to a question she had not asked. The expression rests in the space a smile should be, and he nods once, twisting his hand so the bell jingles on his wrist.

‘Well done, Princess, well done,’ Fransen says. ‘On to the next, yes?’

She puffs up her chest in pride and nods. ‘This way,’ she says. ‘I think I saw another one this way.’ She leads him along, thinking, I can’t wait to tell Elician what I did, knowing he would be so proud of her. Knowing, too, that he would want to learn more about this, and that she does as well.

Once Fen understands the trick, starting fires comes naturally. It takes five days to walk through every part of Kreuzfurt, exploring each tree, each pillar, each wide-open area for any lingering trace of stinging bark. Fransen accompanies them through all of it, wearily trailing behind and delaying their progress as they wait for him to catch up.

‘Does it hurt to walk?’ Cat asks quietly when he sees Fransen rubbing his left knee. He has a low voice, deep and guttural. It scratches at his throat when he talks, too dry and always on the edge of a cough. Rarely does he deign to talk to her , but on occasion he will grunt or hiss, or make some other noise or gesture she takes as a response. When he does speak, though, he seems to always say something she had been thinking or considering herself. Fransen’s walking had been driving her to distraction, and she is glad that someone has finally put into words what she’d struggled to find the most tactful way to say.

Fransen tells them, ‘It doesn’t really. But for forty years I had a bad knee – had it hacked into pretty good during the River Wars. Ever since waking up a Reaper, it hasn’t bothered me at all, and yet I keep feeling like it should. It’s the absence that drives me insane more than anything else, I think.’ Cat’s brows furrow at that. His nose scrunches up. He opens his mouth as if he is going to argue but closes it again while still looking confused. Fransen smiles genially and pats Cat’s head like a favoured pet. ‘Come along, we’re almost done.’

They are. They look very carefully at all the remaining gardens, but none of them see any lingering traces of the vines. Fransen encourages them to do one final walk about the grounds just to make sure, though.

‘I don’t understand why either of you had to come with me in the first place. I could have just lit them on fire without them dying first.’

‘And if it got out of control, how would you have put the fire out?’ Fransen tsks .

‘It wouldn’t have got out of control,’ she replies. Cat had only needed to intervene twice, and both times she could have stamped on the flames if they had truly become a problem. Fransen does not seem so easily convinced. He sniffs and shrugs one rumpled shoulder up with no further comment. Fen scowls at the ground beneath her feet, asking, ‘Have you ever withered vines before?’ as they continue their circuit.

‘Oh, once or twice, though I wasn’t this efficient.’

‘And fire, have you seen that before?’

‘No,’ he replies. ‘Though Marina and Zinnitzia have been working their craft for far longer. I’m sure they know far more than I do.’ She knew that. She tries not to show her disappointment at his lack of knowledge. She really doesn’t want to ask Zinnitzia about being a Giver yet. Sun above, she’d probably lecture me for not paying attention sooner and then give me even more homework to do, Fen thinks in horror. Elician will get his answers eventually. But Fen is resolved to take her time and do it methodically – Zinnitzia just happens to be at the end of her list of things to tackle. It seems more prudent to keep it that way.

On the sixth day of her new training regimen, though, she does not need to wander the grounds of Kreuzfurt snooping for information. Instead, Fransen takes them deep into the House of the Unwanting, circling up through the many staircases until they reach a series of corridors that lead to the House’s great library. Elena Morsen has set up a kind of workshop at the far end, and Fransen settles into a large chair by a window as Elena welcomes them over. He closes his eyes and seems to doze off in moments. Fen walks briskly towards the rows of long desks. Papers and mysterious equipment are spread across every available surface, and she stands as far away from Cat as she can politely get away with, waiting to be acknowledged.

Elena greets them both with a jolly wave, wiping sweaty palms on the front of her tunic before sitting on the edge of her table and shuffling back to let her legs hang. ‘Tell me, Princess,’ she says, foregoing any preamble, ‘what makes something alive?’

‘Independent movement,’ Fen suggests. She glances at Cat. ‘And the ability to reproduce.’

‘Good. Cat? Thoughts? Anything else?’ He blinks at her, clearly not anticipating the direct question. Fen opens her mouth to give an excuse for him – he doesn’t talk much – but Cat surprises her with an answer.

‘Breathing,’ he murmurs, nose scrunching as if he is trying to remember something from long ago. ‘Growth. Excretion.’

‘Plants don’t breathe,’ Fen argues. ‘So that doesn’t count.’

‘They do, actually. Alpeur Rangie identified the unique cell structure of what he called a stoma on a series of plant samples in 839,’ Elena says. ‘It’s a bit complicated, but the short of it is that plant life takes in gas and releases it in a manner that we’d consider to be breathing. More or less.’

It’s an Alelunen name. Alelunen science. Fen bites her lip. Watch. Learn. ‘But . . . fire doesn’t breathe either.’ Unless it has a secret stoma too.

‘Fire is actually a unique case. You’re right in that it is technically not alive. But it does all the things that would require life. It moves, it eats, it grows. It needs oxygen to survive so it mimics a need for breathing, and it can even replicate in the sense that it spawns more fire just by its contact. Where it fails is that the fire itself is more of a response to something that is happening to a living cell beneath. That cell, and all of its atomic structure, has been given so much excess energy that it ignites. The fire is not alive, but it is the result of an action taken upon it.’

‘But I told it to live when I started setting fires in the first place,’ Fen argues.

‘Just because you tell something to do something doesn’t mean it will. The telling doesn’t do much. The intention and the focus you apply to it, however, do a great deal more. If it helps you to think that you’re making it live, then who am I to stop you? The fact you did it at all is impressive.’ Elena leans backwards across the table to snag a large bag. Dragging it towards her, maps and paperwork skitter in all directions. She pulls a roll of parchment from the bag and lays it out for their perusal. Anatomical drawings fill it from one end to the other, all showing transitions in the process of ageing. ‘Now, when it comes to matters of what makes things alive , there are some exceptions. Earlier you mentioned reproduction, Princess. But there comes a time in many living things’ lives where they are unable to reproduce any longer. In human women, this is seen during what we call final repose.’ Cat’s head tilts. Fen feels her cheeks burn red even as Elena answers, ‘That’s when their monthly flows cease. You understand what that is?’ She repeats the question in Lunae, but that does not seem to clear things up. Someone taught him about plant breathing and excrement but not that , and Fen covers her face with her hands as Elena explains the process in as clinical and academic a manner as Fen has ever heard it.

By the time Fen looks back up, she is horrified to see Cat looking at her as if he expects her to start her flows right before his eyes. Elena clears her throat and continues her lecture before either of them can say anything. ‘Final repose can happen for any number of reasons, though. Not just through ageing. Illness, removal of the necessitating organs or other damage to the organic material also apply. Our Queen Calissia is unable to bear more children, for instance. She cannot reproduce. Is she dead?’

‘What? No, of course not,’ Fen says, scandalized at the mere thought of discussing her adoptive mother and monarch in such a way. ‘That’s different!’

‘How is it different? If you must be able to reproduce to be considered alive , then why is she not dead?’

Fen scrambles, desperate to remember terminology. ‘Her body continues to live. Her . . . her cells. Those reproduce even if she doesn’t.’

Elena nods. She grins enthusiastically, speaking quickly now. ‘Then, so long as the cells that comprise something can continue to exhibit those traits, life exists?’

‘Yes,’ Fen agrees.

Elena points to Cat. ‘If you cut yourself, your body heals, yes?’ He nods. ‘That is cellular regrowth. You are alive.’

‘I’m not,’ he tells her, voice cracking badly in the centre. ‘Reapers are dead —’

Fransen coughs loudly from his place by the window. All three turn towards him, and the aged Reaper adjusts in his seat, eyes still closed, basking in the sun like a contented lizard.

‘Reapers make things around them dead,’ Fransen says. He slowly opens his eyes, looking directly at Cat as he does. ‘But you, dear boy, are very much alive.’

‘I died,’ he insists. ‘I drowned.’

‘And yet, your cells remake you when you are hurt. They reproduce . You breathe . You grow , and you will continue to grow until you reach a peak level of adulthood. Then, and only then, will you stop. Meanwhile, your blood is replenished, your lungs fill with air, you have movement. You are alive.’

‘He’s a Reaper,’ Fen repeats. ‘He isn’t a living thing, he’s—’

‘Why not?’ Elena asks.

‘Everyone says —’

‘Maybe everyone is wrong.’

Fen shakes her head. She looks at Cat, then at Fransen. Fransen is frowning ever so slightly in their direction, but Cat’s attention is devoted to the anatomy chart on the table. Pictures of humans in various stages of life stare back up at him. Men, women, children, the elderly. All around them are scattered drawings of organs and even cellular structures. A small square near Cat’s right hand surrounds five words: cells, homeostasis, reproduction, metabolism, genes. Far more in-depth than anything Fen has ever been taught before. Cat’s brows are scrunched tight, his whole face contorted by the ferocity of his thoughts. ‘Marina says if you do not eat, you grow weak,’ Elena goes on, gently. So gently. ‘Your bodies enter a kind of . . . stasis where it neither voids nor grows. It slows much of your ability to develop. But it does not destroy it. When you do eat, you flourish. You grow. You void once more. And so, you do have a metabolism, slow as it is. You are still alive, and all life is sacred, Cat. Even yours. Even if you cannot tell it is life, even as you live it.’

He stares at her. Silent. Jaw clenched. Elena says no more. Instead, she reaches for her bag and pulls out two complicated apparatuses made of wood and glass. Both are carelessly set on top of the parchment. She withdraws a small wooden box next and slowly assembles a complex piece of equipment from a glass flask and tubes. Finally, she places a leaf on a slip of glass, under what turns out to be an eyepiece. She instructs Fen to light a small candle and the leaf is suddenly illuminated. Cat is still standing motionless to one side, but at Elena’s encouragement, Fen leans down to peer through the newly configured eyepiece.

At first, the brown colouring of the leaf is all she sees. She turns a small focusing screw under Elena’s instruction until finally it shows something else. Something she has only ever seen drawn on the strange posters that decorate Zinnitzia’s study. ‘They’re . . . cells ,’ she breathes out, shocked. Small bricklike structures are stacked on top of each other. They are separated only by thin lines. Inside each cell are even smaller structures, circles and loops and whorls that she remembers reading about, and forgetting about, in her homework assignments. Introductions to Alelunen science that no one ever had followed up on. Good to know what those people think about, but hardly useful for us, the King had once said. She had never thought she would ever need, or want, to see more.

‘They are,’ Elena says. ‘They’re also dead. Can you fix that for us?’ Fen glances at where the leaf is being held up, hovers a finger over it and peers down into the tube once more. Slowly, she lowers her finger. Live, she thinks as she touches the brittle stem. Softer, gentler, than her command to the vines. Just a bit of encouragement. Plants never need much.

The cells move. They jiggle. They change colours, becoming fleshy and verdant. The interiors start shifting this way and that, wriggling against one another as they metabolize and secure energy from beyond. They become alive . ‘Let Cat see,’ Elena requests. Fen steps back and he shuffles closer. Peering down, a soft hiss whooshes between his teeth in a kind of stunned awe. She wishes she knew why he made that sound. That odd hiss that seems far easier to him than actual words from time to time.

He tugs the glove from his right hand and reaches for the specimen. The verdant leaf slowly wilts, crumbles and decays. The green leaches from its structure. It returns, shrivelled and sad, to the husky brown thing that Elena had first produced. Cat hisses again, softer now. He wiggles his fingers at Fen, and she replaces his touch with her own, willing it back to life. He keeps his eyes focused on the tube, the magnification, watching the play of life and death before him.

He kills the leaf again, has her heal it, then he kills it once more. ‘I want to see too,’ Fen insists. He does not move, and she shoves his shoulder. Not hard, not in an attempt to overbalance him, but he recoils at the contact – bell shrieking at his wrist. He trips over his feet and throws himself bodily in the opposite direction. Papers and books crash to the ground, and he stays where he falls, frozen in place.

Fen’s heart clogs her throat. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ she insists. Elena steps around her, reaching for Cat. ‘No – wait !’ Cat recoils once more, jerking his bare hand behind him as Elena freezes in place. She is neither Giver nor Reaper. To her, his touch will kill. And Fen had seen her. Seen her reaching, as if she was going to help him. But she can’t . She’ll die. At the window, Fransen begins to move. He stands, then shuffles closer.

‘No need to fear me, boy,’ Fransen says simply as he steps around both Fen and Elena to wrap his fingers around Cat’s ungloved hand and give it a light pull. ‘Come, show me what it is you youngsters are getting up to with this newfangled nonsense. I never bothered learning my sciences. Cells and molecules and other Alelunen witchery. Show me what you’re doing.’ He tugs Cat closer and Elena pats Fransen on the shoulder as she politely cedes the floor. ‘Come on, Princess, give us a light, then we’ll all take turns. Now, Cat, show me what it looks like when we kill something. There’s a good lad. Fascinating. Truly. Come look, Princess. Let’s do it again.’ Nervous and shivery, Fen glances back into the long tube. She watches the leaf die. Then she heals it. They run through the cycle three more times, then she steps back to let Cat look again. Only, when he does, he moves the leaf out of the way. He looks at his hand beneath the glass, and Elena carefully helps adjust the focus so he can see it more clearly.

When it is Fen’s turn, he holds his hand still and lets her look. She expects a sign. A mark. Something that shows just how dangerous and physically abhorrent his existence is. But there is nothing. No difference at all. His skin is pale, hers sun-darkened from hours spent basking in its golden glow. But on a cellular level . . . she sees no difference. Not a single one.

‘But why do Reapers kill people when they touch them, and I don’t?’ Fen asks.

‘That,’ Elena says, ‘has nothing to do with science. That has everything to do with the gods.’ Cat slowly pulls on his right glove. He tucks its edges under the long sleeves of his tunic, then crosses his arms in front of his chest as Elena explains. ‘The gods choose who will be a Giver and who a Reaper. It is their divinity that marks you as such.’ Fen’s teeth clench. It is an utterly unsatisfactory answer. Being divine has never done anything good for her, and it has done even less good for Cat.

‘Why?’ she asks again.

‘I can only show you what the science says. I can show you the how, but as for the why?’ Elena shrugs. She glances at Fransen, who shrugs as well.

‘I think it’s because we’re meant to do something for the gods,’ Fransen says. ‘It was our original purpose, wasn’t it? Givers do Life’s work for him, and Reapers do the same for Death. There must be something that they want accomplished and we are the only ones who can do it.’

‘But why choose you , then?’ Fen asks. ‘With us, we are younger. Stronger. We won’t have the same problems as you because you’re . . .’

‘Old? And thus I have less value?’ Fransen laughs like a bark, loud, snapping exhalations that seep derision. ‘Perhaps I can only do what I need to do for my god because I am old. Perhaps no one else can do what I need to do, and that’s why I was chosen. Who am I to question that?’

‘So that’s it. We’re just supposed to live out the rest of our lives, waiting to do some unknown task just because the gods decided it?’

‘No,’ Fransen replies. ‘It’s too much bother wondering how we achieve our purpose. No, I rather think it’s far more logical to simply go on living our lives the same as we did before. If, by doing that, I manage to please the gods, then wonderful. And if not? Then it is beyond my capacity to know or care. I am like this, one way or another, so I may as well enjoy it. Don’t you think?’

‘How can you possibly enjoy being dead ?’

‘Because I’m not. As you’ve already seen. I may have died to become a Reaper, but I am still so much more than just that. Just as you are so much more than your abilities as a Giver.’

Elena clears her throat. ‘Abilities that I think you’re struggling with, yes?’ she asks gently. Fen flushes. She crosses her arms over her chest. She does not need them. She does not want them. It is fine. ‘Marina said you can bring dead things back to life, but struggle with healing things, or rather: mending and improving the health of things already alive.’

‘So?’

‘So, tomorrow, we’re going to talk about necrotic flesh,’ Elena tells her, smiling brightly. ‘And I think you’re going to enjoy those lessons far more.’