Page 7 of Wild Reverence

I swallowed. I thought I understood then, and while I knew parts, I could not see the whole of it yet.

“Yes,” I murmured, even as doubt sawed through me like a sword.

“Then you must not speak a word of it to Bade. Or Alva.” My mother turned my head and resumed her brushing with harder strokes. I winced as the comb snagged on a tangle. “Promise me.”

“I promise.” I was quick to reassure her, if only to soften her hand. “But may I ask why? Why have the scale, if it is so dangerous? Why have the Skyward coins, if they are forbidden here?”

My mother paused.

She set the comb aside and then pressed something smooth and cool into my palm. One of the Skyward coins, and how my heart swelled to hold it up to the light.

It was not heavy and solid like Underling money was, and I studied it intimately, surprised to see the blue within its circle, and clouds that drifted, like the coin was a living entity, or a mirror of the mortal sky.

“Come with me,” my mother said with a hint of excitement. “I want to show you something.”

I followed her to the main hearth. The flames had been low, but when they sensed her presence, they rose, dancing for her. All fire answered to her, as she was the goddess of it.

Zenia took a second Skyward coin from the small purse of frozen cobwebs she kept belted at her waist. I leaned closer to study the money. This one was dark as night, with a half-moon glowing upon its face. Another glimpse of the sky, immortalized as a coin.

Before I could say anything, my mother flicked it into the fire.

“ Mother, ” I cried, flinching. I dropped, my knees hitting the hearthstone with a crack, and I reached out my hand, desperate to snatch the coin from the flames.

Zenia held me back.

“No,” she said. “Listen, daughter.”

I paused, stricken. But as the midnight coin began to melt, it released an ephemeral sound. At the time, I did not know how to describe it, but it was a long exhale of music. A trio of flutes, woven together by the notes of a harp.

The sound was exquisite. And now that I had heard such splendor, I could not forget it. The way it had filled me like the darkest of wines, the brightest of moons.

This was magic that I could not cast but could still feel in my body, in my soul.

And I desired more of it.

I could not move. I could not breathe as I listened, but once the coin had fully melted, the sound became smoke, dancing up the chimney.

“What was that?” I asked.

My mother merely nodded at the Skyward coin I still held, gripped in my fist. The shade of the midday sky wreathed in fluffy white clouds.

I gave it to the fire, conflicted, and listened to another snippet of music. One that stole my breath. One that filled me with such delight that I felt bereft when it vanished into smoke.

For a while, my mother and I took turns tossing coins to the fire, inhaling the music the melting coins gave to us.

We felt sorrow, triumph, anguish, pride, all inspired by the sounds the coins held.

We did not have such beauty in the under realm.

We had our drums, which beat like a second heart in our chests when we heard them, dictating our dances, but we did not have the collective emotion that the Skyward flutes, lyres, auloi, kitharas, cymbals, and harps possessed.

The goddess of music is a Skyward, and her name is Enva.

By the time my mother’s purse of coins was empty, we were both heavy, satiated by the snippets of music. It was Zenia’s way of apologizing for hitting me earlier, and I rested my head on her shoulder, watching the flames.

“I still do not understand why you had these coins,” I said, my voice low, dreamlike. “Can we get more?”

“The Skywards pay a great amount for an eithral scale,” Zenia replied. “Far more than they do for our gemstones, our marble, our obsidian.”

We could trade such goods for Skyward nectar from the clouds, garments spun from wind, and honey from their apiaries. These exchanges were acceptable, even amongst enemies. But she was speaking of the things we traded in the dark, in secret. The things that were forbidden.

Her candor only emboldened me. She was seeing me as an ally, and not a god-child.

“And how difficult is it to come by a scale? Did Phelyra truly steal one from an eithral while it slept?”

“No.” My mother caressed my hair, but her eyes were trained on the fire. “She found one, in the lowest reach of the realm, where the eithrals are kept. The scale was loose, lying abandoned on the ground, and she took it. Occasionally, they fall free from the beasts, after Dacre wounds them.”

“Dacre wounds them?” I echoed, my stomach twisting.

“Yes. How else could he control them? When they begin to diverge from his wishes, he gives them a mortal blow, and then heals them. The beasts are compliant afterward. He does the same with his pack of hounds.”

I was respectful of the wolflike hounds, who lived in dens scattered throughout the realm, as I was of the eithrals, which meant I rarely encountered them on my own. But imagining such extraordinary creatures being wounded, just to keep them subordinate, filled my mouth with ash.

“That is sad,” I whispered.

“Do not waste emotion on such beasts, Matilda.”

I accepted the rebuke but picked at one of my fingernails.

“Why do the Skywards want an eithral’s scale?” I eventually asked. “What do they do with them?”

“To possess one equates to power.”

That revelation sobered me, as if Zenia had splashed ice-cold water in my face.

“Power? In what way?”

“An eithral scale can cut through anything. Even the mind, the heart of a god. To harbor a single scale instills fear, even amongst Skywards.”

“Why are we giving the Skywards such power?” I asked. “They despise us.”

“The scales are few and far between. They do not make their way into any Skyward hand but only a select few, if that is what you are worried about. But also because we possess hearts, as much as we try to ignore them, and a heart always wants what it cannot have,” Zenia responded.

“What would you give to hear such music again, Matilda? To feel such magic stir in your blood?”

I bit the inside of my cheek until I felt a throb of pain.

And I realized that I would surrender just about anything to hear that fleeting music once more.

The Skyward harp was still echoing in my memory hours later as I read Alva’s dream scroll. She had delivered it to me with such a strange smile, a knowing gleam in her eye that I did not understand until I opened the scroll and read the first dream, freshly inked.

It was another one of Vincent’s.

He dreamt of the river again, and this time, he also dreamt of me.