Page 66 of Wild Reverence

XLVIII

Tip the Scales

MATILDA

The wasteland was just as I remembered.

Salmon-colored clay rolled into hillocks and vales.

Strange trees grew long crooked boughs, their branches clad with eternal leaves.

Fireflies drifted aimlessly. The illusion of the creek held steady, babbling with iridescence.

The sky still burned like sunset, holding its two suns and four moons and all the stars in the sky.

I savored the wild magic of this place for a moment, my heart thundering from my run up the tower stairs.

Any door that opened to nowhere answered to me.

They could all bring me here if I wanted, I realized.

But then a shiver crept down my spine. I glanced at my belt and saw the Gatekeeper’s eye was almost fully open.

Nathaniel had traveled quickly. He was approaching the archway.

I felt time again like a lash across my palm.

Like I was mortal. Quickly, I removed the gauntlets from my hands, the greaves from my shins.

I let those pieces of armor fall, where they melted into quicksilver puddles on the ground.

The chainmail I kept, and it gleamed like hundreds of tiny stars when I broke into a sprint.

Up one hillock, and down into its lavender, rocky vale. Beneath the outstretched arms of trees, and over the serpentine creek with its imaginary water. I followed the path, worn down by thousands of dead feet, my speed only building with each step I took, each breath I drew.

I had been here before with Xan.

And I knew I was almost at the gate.

Up another daunting hill, and then the landscape broke open before me and went flat like a cracked egg.

I could see the wishbone arch; I could taste the taunt of the mists, and how the mere thought of them roused my thirst to a relentless ache. And there, standing at the threshold, gazing into the passage to eternal rest, was Nathaniel.

He still wore his armor from battle. The garments and steel he had worn when he died.

He gleamed beneath the suns and moons like a fallen star.

Blood continued to drip from his neck, bright as pressed strawberries plucked from the moors.

A steady flow that made me think of the river he had been born to.

When the Gatekeeper stepped through the arch to greet him, he flinched.

Wait! My mind was full of commands that had no wings to fly, words that caught in my throat like thorns.

I darted down the hill, my legs warm and strong, my pulse a throb at my temples. Within moments, I had devoured the space between us, and the Gatekeeper lifted her head to regard me in surprise. A wide, skewed smile stole across her face, revealing every pointed tooth in her mouth.

“Herald,” she said. “We meet again.”

My pace slowed to a walk. My skin glistened with perspiration; my hair felt tangled at the nape of my neck.

“Gatekeeper,” I greeted her, before my attention drifted to Nathaniel. He was staring at me, his face flushed, his eyes wide. Gently, I said to him, “ Brother. ”

I had never called anyone by such a term. I had never spoken with such endearment. And perhaps I surprised myself, most of all.

This was not pretense. This was not an act.

“Sister,” he replied, his posture softening in relief. He moved to stand close to me. “Where… where am I?”

“The wastelands, child,” the Gatekeeper answered before I could. “Haven’t you been told the old myths? Or were you reared in an irreverent hall?”

Nathaniel was quiet. His arm brushed my own but there was no warmth. Only a delicate cold, like frost before dawn.

I thought about who he had been in the living realm.

He had been vibrant. Someone who was quick to laugh, brimming with mirth.

Someone who loved and listened and defended those he cared for.

A mere boy, I thought with a pang, who had just become a man.

He had still been growing into his body.

There had been far too much ahead of him, a life still eager to be tasted.

“Am I dead?” he asked in a hollow tone.

“ Yes, ” said the Gatekeeper in a sibilant tone, unable to hide her delight. “Do you not feel the lingering warmth of who you were when you lived? Do you not feel the blow that sent you to me?”

He raised his hand to touch his sliced neck. His fingers came away slick and red with his blood, although I saw the flow was beginning to darken and ease. Soon, he would be bled dry and so thirsty he would crawl to the mists, keen to find rest.

“I thought I heard music,” he said, suddenly wistful. “A harp, urging me to choose between two songs. One that led above and one that led below.”

I held my breath. Yes, he would have heard Enva’s music after he perished.

Her songs could guide dead mortals if they chose to become shades, ferrying them either Skyward or to the Underlings.

I was relieved, for the first time in my life, that Nathaniel had turned away from her music.

He had chosen the silence that came with the wastes.

“Many dead have followed the music to become shades, forgoing the judgment of my gate. But many others have passed through my archway this day,” the Gatekeeper said as she brought forth her golden balancing scales.

She set them on the ground before us, the two empty pans chiming, and I had a vague recollection of Xan, desperate to fill one side up with bones.

“Although it is rare indeed to have the herald arrive alongside the dead. She must be keen to escort you, mortal boy.”

I frowned. She had said something similar to Xan and me, many years ago.

You may pass into the mists, Xan of Underling. Unless you would prefer to have the herald escort you?

“I have no desire to be a shade in a divine court,” Nathaniel said, interrupting my reveries. There was a hint of fear in his voice. “I would rather you weigh my soul and see if I am worthy of the mists. But how… what must I do?”

“The doing is over,” she said before I could so much as part my lips. “You have spent your time, and now it is mine to judge. Begin at the beginning.”

“The beginning?”

I leaned closer to him. “She wants to hear stories of your life. The moments that have made you. The fears you once had, as well as the victories. The heartaches. The joys. The anger. The regrets.”

She is a glutton, I wanted to add but did not. She is empty and hungry. She wants to be full, and so she craves your stories. Your sins. Your wounds. Your feelings.

Nathaniel did not look confident. It was the first time I had truly seen him appear worried.

“I was born on the river,” he finally said.

“During a storm. My mother feared it would flood, and so she refused to leave the tower during her labors. My father was bailing water from the dungeons when I arrived. He was not the first to hold me. My eldest brother was, and he was the one to name me. Nathaniel. A gift. ”

To my relief, the Gatekeeper was intrigued. She tossed a small finger digit into the pan.

“Go on,” she said. “I am listening.”

Nathaniel continued sharing fragments of his life.

I noticed the Gatekeeper loved the story of his mother, of how she had abandoned them for the Skyward realm.

She also reveled in the memory of Grimald’s treachery, although Nathaniel had been so young he had not been in the hall when the betrayal had unfolded.

But he could vividly recall the smell of blood, the stench of death. The screams, the anguish.

I listened and watched the pan, how the bones gathered. But the weight was lacking; he needed to give her more to make the pan touch the soil, to outweigh the other side.

His voice was soon hoarse, his stories disjointed.

He was growing weary, thirsty. The blood had ceased dripping from his wound.

“Is that all?” the Gatekeeper asked, her craggy face smoothed by boredom.

She was losing interest. My heart flared in worry.

“I…” Nathaniel glanced at me, haggard.

“Is there anything else you can give her?” I whispered. “Secrets, or stories you have never told another?”

“I have told her everything,” he replied, weary. “I do not want to be here. I do not want to be dead.”

I looked at the scales again, my skin pebbled from the cold. No, I thought. Vincent’s brother would be denied the mists, and I could not bear it. He would have to wander the wastes, parched and lonely. He would be destined to forget who he had been, eventually succumbing to a nightmare.

“Gatekeeper,” I said, drawing her attention. “My brother is young. He was taken long before his time. Surely you account for the years that have been lived?”

“I have spoken with mortals younger than him who have tipped the scales with ease,” she answered with a sigh. “If that is all he has, then I will return to my lair.”

“ Wait. ” I licked my dry lips. I, too, longed to drink the mists. To slake the thirst I felt, and I was not even dead. “Let me give some of my stories on his behalf. Let them fill the pan as bones.”

The Gatekeeper cocked her head, brow raised over her missing eye socket. Silver hair spilled over her shoulder like a waterfall over pale rocks.

“I have never been asked this,” she said. “Nor has this ever been done. I will need something else from you. A bargain, in exchange for this mercy.”

“Matilda,” Nathaniel rasped. He reached out to take my arm, but I could not feel his touch. Only fingers of ice. “If you give up your stories, then what will happen when you face the mists?”

“I will not face the mists,” I told him. “But if I do, it will be many years from now. I will have plenty of time to gather up new stories.”

My confidence reassured him and amused her. She knew, as I did, that there was always a chance I would face her before I was ready, just as Xan had. Just as my mother had.

“What is your price?” I asked the Gatekeeper. My bluntness could have peeled skin from an unripe fruit, but we had already spent far too much time here, listening to Nathaniel dole out his life for a handful of bones.

I was growing impatient, irritated.

She was pensive as she considered my question. I could nearly see the stars wheeling in the sky behind her, as if she were siphoning their magic. As if she were counting her own ribs and the emptiness she still harbored, imagining what she could demand of me that would fill her like a tide pool.

“Ten years you must give me,” the Gatekeeper finally said.

“Ten years by mortal reckoning, beginning the next time you come to the wasteland. Within those ten years, you must serve as my herald. You will have the power to come and go between mist and waste, but you cannot stray back into the world of the living. Not until your service is complete.”

This was unexpected.

Blood thinned to watery gold in my veins, imagining this bargain. I could taste bitter dregs at the back of my throat.

What use could she have of me? What good would a herald be here in the wasteland, in the mists, with those who had died?

Once more, I felt the edge of time.

As an immortal, ten years should be like dust. A mere page in a tome. But I was measuring it by something else now. I was measuring it by Vincent’s breaths.

Inevitably, one day he would stand in this very place.

I decided I could dwell ten years here, but it needed to be after he was gone. After his mortal end had come, and I had seen him safely to the mists.

“Five years,” I was bold enough to barter. “And after those five years are done, I can continue to come and go through the gate of the mists whenever I desire.”

Whenever I wanted to see him again. The gate would not separate us.

Her smile only deepened, carving grooves in her face. She sensed I was hopelessly tangled with something doomed to die. Someone I was fated to love and then lose.

“ Seven, ” she said. “No less than that, herald, or you will offend me. Furthermore, no one will know of this agreement between us save for me and you. If you try to speak of it before it is fulfilled, your mouth will be silenced. And yes, the mists will never be barred from you. Not if you fulfill the bargain.”

“Then I agree to the seven years of service, so long as my stories hold weight that will see Nathaniel to the mists.”

“Yes, yes. Why shouldn’t they?”

“Swear to it, Gatekeeper.”

“I give you my vow, Matilda. Your stories will hold weight on his behalf. They will see him safely through my gate.”

I had bound her as she had bound me. And I could only hope I would not regret what I had done.