Page 111 of Wild Reverence

Epilogue

Myths and Mortal Hearts

On a cold spring evening, when it had been raining for three days and the streetlights struggled to burn against the perpetual gloam, I summoned Matilda to me.

I imagined it would take her some time to arrive.

She would have to travel through the mists, the wastes, and then the mortal realm, but I knew she would come.

I patiently waited for her on the ground floor of an antique shop, surrounded by rare curiosities—a few of them enchanted—as well as mundane odds and ends.

There were piles of books, brass sextants, paintings of ships on the sea, old lamps with stained glass shades, and copper teakettles that had patinated with age.

Empty tins brimming with paint brushes, clocks with cracked faces, baskets full of metal gears and instruments.

A stack of newspapers sat on a stool, and beside it, lined up on a desk, were three typewriters, freshly built and gleaming in the light.

The typewriters each held their own individual enchantment, but they were not linked together yet.

The owner of this shop not only collected antiques but was a mechanic, a repairman, an inventor, and a dreamer himself, devout when it came to magic.

This building rested on a ley line and he knew how to use that to his advantage.

His senses were sharper than those of most humans, and when I had observed him one day with an enchanted monocle, which he wore when he worked so he could see all the potential magical threads within the materials he wielded, I knew he could create what I envisioned.

I only needed to persuade Mr. Stone in a dream to commission the typewriters from this metalworker.

I stared at the keys, tempted to touch them.

I refrained, thinking again of Mr. Stone and his desperation to have something connect his ailing daughter to her two friends.

That sad desperation had moved something in me.

Alouette Stone was doomed to die and soon, but there was still so much life within her.

So many words she had not said yet. It did not seem possible that someone like her would be extinguished like flame, but I had never quite understood the games Death and Fate played.

I wanted to help her. And so I had pulled strings within dreams, guiding Mr. Stone here to this shop, planting the idea of the three typewriters in his mind for his daughter and her two friends.

I only needed the magic to bind them together, and that power was not mine.

The door to the shop swung open, the bell ringing above it.

I waited in a shadow until I was certain it was her.

Tall and lithe, her auburn hair glistening with rain.

She wore a simple white dress that dragged on the floor behind her, and golden brooches sat at her shoulders.

Her waist was cinched by the moonstone belt I had once envied for its beauty and practicality.

Our gazes met and held.

If Matilda was surprised by the advanced state of the mortal world, a world that was full of incandescent lights that could be directed by a switch, and trams that clanged through the streets, and trains that cut through pastures, and smoke that stained the air, she concealed it well.

She had died many years ago but had returned to live alongside her mortal love.

Their time together had been simple but fulfilling.

When he had eventually passed, silver-headed and weathered by the generous years given to him, she had gone with him to the mists, much to the shock of the gods.

I had not seen her again after that, maybe because that was when the conflict between the Underlings and Skywards flared bright and violent.

She was the only dead divine who could come and go as she pleased.

Who could cross the threshold of the mists as she willed.

What power she held; it radiated from her like the summer sun.

I could hardly believe she had been forgotten amongst men.

That her name could only be evoked by the oldest of divines, and we had all but melted away in this new world.

It was a stroke of luck, as the mortals say, that I remembered her, and she happened to have the magic that I needed.

“Matilda,” I said, and stepped forward to greet her.

She was wary at first. I could not fault her. I had just pulled her from the rapture and rest and whatever else could be found within paradise. But when I reached out to embrace her, she returned the affection.

The braid of hair that I had once knotted to her wrist was still there, waiting for me to call in the debt she owed me for sparing her life. What an evening that had been in Alva’s burrow, long, long ago.

“Enva,” Matilda said to me. My name was a soft sigh in her voice. “You look just as I remember.”

“As do you, my old friend.”

I gave her a moment to glance around the shop. Her eyes, however, were inevitably drawn to the very reason I needed her. She looked at the typewriters, and there her gaze remained.

“What are those?”

She moved closer, gazing down at the keys.

I followed but was quiet, watching as she traced them with her fingertips. She pressed down on the key marked by I, then R. The M and the V. She watched in delight as the typebars swiftly responded, flying up to hit the ink ribbon.

“Typewriters,” I said. “They create messages by pressing words onto paper.”

Matilda touched all three of them, playing with their keys. But she must have sensed the weight of my summoning. Her smile faded as she straightened, meeting my stare.

“Why have you called me here?”

“I would like to borrow your magic,” I said. “A payment for the debt you owe me.”

Quietly, she removed the bracelet of hair and handed it to me.

“What magic?” she asked.

She was many things. She was words and souls, spring and iron. She was rivers. And none of them could ever be stolen from her.

“Words,” I said. “As well as soul.”

She arched a brow at me.

“I have no intention of bearing souls,” I was quick to add. “But I think you know that the soul can be found in words, and words within the soul. The two reflect each other in the sky, do they not?”

Matilda was pensive. I thought she might refuse, but then she pulled a dagger from her belt. I watched as she cut her palm, and her ichor welled, sweet and golden in the lamplight.

“Hold out your hands,” she said.

I obeyed, and a shiver coursed through me as she drew the constellations on my palms. Soul on my right, words on my sinister.

I had not specified a term for the loan, but I only needed her magic for a moment.

I turned to the typewriters and touched all three of them.

I let her magic flow through me like a luminous current, down into the keys, the typebars, the ribbons, the spools.

The three were soon connected by an invisible golden thread, by ley lines, wardrobe doors, and thresholds.

A strange way to link them, but that came directly from Matilda.

An essence of her magic and her own lived experiences.

My hands slid from the keys.

When I turned to look at her, Matilda was gone.

The shop door closed in her wake.

The constellations faded from my palms. When I studied the three typewriters again, I saw the magic gathering in the space between letters, the space between words. I saw the magic draw tight as strings. Like notes, unsung, waiting for the right hands to play them.

Over the many years I have been alive, dwelling in all three realms, I have watched the myths shift and change depending on who is telling the story.

Like a ballad that sounds different depending on the musician who is singing the lyrics.

Myths written about me. Myths in which I am soft and pliable, a virgin bride to an angry Underling god.

Myths in which I plot his demise, and my music is cruel, compelling all who are misfortunate enough to hear my notes, my voice.

I have seen myths claim that I sing mortal souls Skyward or to the under realm after death, that I guide their souls either above or below as shades waiting to spend eternity in our courts. Even that is only partly true.

My music can reach souls after death—filling the space when the heart finally falls quiet—but Matilda is the one who truly guides them to rest.

Matilda, whom the myths would seek to cut away and forget, all because she loved a mortal man.

Some stories claim that humans are beholden to the gods. But that is also not true. The divine is nothing without mortal hearts. And should we love them, we should not be punished for it.

No, I think. It is all the more reason why we should be remembered.

I left the shop behind, although I would see the typewriters again, and soon.

As I walked the streets, I could hear a distant melody, gathering in my mind.

It was inspired by moonstones and fire, by a river and a fortress built by mortal hands.

By ichor spilled onto the snow. It was inspired by Matilda and Vincent, and I suddenly yearned to play it, even with my aching hands.

I lifted my face to the rain, to the dark sky, to the clouds that hid the stars. And I imagined what might come from a single word. A single letter sent bravely into the ether.

Matilda’s magic was about to rewrite all the old myths.

THE END