Page 79 of Wild Reverence

LIX

Words in a Bottle

MATILDA

Slowly, I came to my surroundings, opening heavy-lidded eyes.

I was lying prone on a plump feather bed, and I did not recognize the room at first. It was open and airy, upheld by pillars that vanished into a ceiling strung with clouds.

A warm zephyr stirred long white drapes.

The floors were marble checkerboard and wildflowers blossomed shyly from the cracks.

Ivy had grown up a wooden table set with pots and jars and a bowl brimming with honey, glistening on the comb.

The vines then circled a small prayer brazier whose embers were dark.

My sight was blurred as I attempted to push myself upright.

I was met by blinding agony. I had never known such pain; it flared across my back as if I had set myself on fire. It was so immense my breath hung like cobwebs in my lungs. My nails scored the bed beneath me.

I could smell my ichor, sweet as summer rain. It began to trickle down my ribs.

The world tilted—clouds, vines, pillars.

I slipped back into a lull of darkness.

When I woke again, it was to birdsong and the clack of a shuttle.

I opened my bleary eyes and beheld the other side of the chamber. Rowena was sitting at her loom; the tapestry she worked was so great and endless it covered the floor like a rug.

It was the tapestry of life. The one she wove alongside Death.

I was at Fate’s villa.

“Matriarch?” I said, my voice like dry leaves, crumbling in my throat.

Rowena’s eyes darted across the room to meet mine. “It is about time you stirred. I was beginning to think that father of yours had lashed your fault line.”

I remembered it then. A memory I was already keen to suppress. On my knees before the Skyward court, my father striking me with a whip made of eithral scales.

I swallowed. My teeth felt sticky, my tongue dry.

“How long have I been here?” I struggled to say.

Rowena stood from her loom. I listened as she walked to the table, pouring a cup of nectar.

“Lift your head, but slowly,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Your wounds are still tender. You already tore them open once, when I was in the orchard.”

I heeded her, gently lifting my head enough so that I could sip the nectar. It flowed into me like sunlight, warming me down to my toes. I sighed, relieved to feel my strength returning, even if it was by small measures.

I drank my fill and then set my head down once more, my hair tangled across the pillow. But Rowena remained beside me, gazing down at me with a perplexed frown.

“Thank you,” I said after an awkward moment. “For helping me.”

“Pff.” That drove her away. She waved a gnarled hand and stood, setting the nectar aside with a clunk on the table. “And to answer your previous question… you have been here two days, by the mortal sun’s rising and falling.”

Two days?

My heart sank.

All I could think of was Vincent. The next battle simmered on the horizon.

He would be wondering where I was. Why I had been away for so long.

I had made him a promise; I had swallowed his words, and I could not rest until I answered them fully.

But nor could I aid him and his people if I was in a different realm, sleeping the hours away.

I needed to leave this villa, as soon as I could stand.

Gently, I tested my strength, eager to sit up in the bed. My scabs began to throb and pull across my back; my skin felt ready to break again, and I held my breath, trembling.

As if she had read my mind, Rowena drawled, “I would lie quiet if I were you. Those scales cut deep. It will take a while for your body to heal itself.”

“Yes, I know. I can feel them.”

Rowena snorted. “Well, I am glad you sound more like yourself. As if the world cannot keep up with your pace, god-child. Which is reckless, might I add. What were you thinking, commandeering an eithral’s sight?

” She clucked her tongue, returning to her loom.

“I do not know if you are brave or foolish.”

Both, I thought, wincing as one of my scabs burst again. Although folly seemed as close as my shadow in those days.

My twelve-point constellation was fully lit in the sky. I had the power to direct eithrals. I could carry souls back from the dead. The news of my power was going to spread, no matter how much I strove to keep it buried.

The target was ever widening around me.

I lowered myself down to the bed, then reached around my ribs to trace the mass of my wounds. The scabs felt warm, feverish. Wounds that would leave behind a lattice of golden scars. I pressed down on the one that had split, my ichor welling through my fingers.

“There is a rag beside you,” Rowena said, no doubt smelling the tang of my blood.

I found the square of linen and held it to the wound, chewing my lip, impatient. I felt like a child again, with soft skin and bones. When the cuts on my knees had been slow to heal, the bruises lingering from all my practice spars with Bade.

“How is my mother, by the way?” Rowena drawled.

Her mother, the Gatekeeper of the wastes.

I realized with a start that my belt was gone. My cloak. The vial of blythe flower. All three I had stored in my cedar chest at the Skyward hall, and I felt their absence like a wasp sting.

“You know I can visit the wasteland?” I asked carefully.

“I did not know until you went there the first time, and your threads changed on the loom. I thought it was Orphia at first, picking apart any weft I had made for you, but then we both realized that neither of us had done it. There had been a strand of your fate that was cloudy, one that not even I could see.”

My sight began to blur again. Drowsiness had turned me leaden, despite my desire to ask Rowena more questions. The heat from my wounds began to sink into my bones.

“Am I in danger?” I asked.

Rowena paused in her weaving. “Name one divine who is not, Matilda. But yes, it would be wise of you to be careful in the days to come. Your constellation is not so small, not as the courts once believed. There will be some gods who will conspire to kill you, gods who once ignored you before.”

“Why were the other stars darkened?”

“Orphia could answer this better than I, but from what I know, those stars were granted to you from your father’s line, and his name was left unclaimed when your horoscope was read. So those stars continued to sleep, hiding their fire until you finally performed the magic on your own.”

I remembered what my mother had told me of that day in Orphia’s burrow, when my stars had shone on her obsidian mirror. Death had seen something else, perhaps a flicker of the unclaimed stars, but had said nothing.

I sank back down to the bed and dozed. Soon, a dark sleep gripped me, one not even Alva could reach with her dreams. I was burning, melting. I felt as if my blood was boiling in my veins, and I knew that I was missing something I needed to heal.

I roused when Rowena cleaned my wounds again. It was night beyond the villa, and the air was cool, starlit. Still, I smoldered. My back throbbed in tandem with my pulse, and I saw the concern on her face when she thought I could not see.

I was dozing again when I heard it. The faintest of voices, as if Vincent was leaning close, whispering into my hair.

Dear Matilda.

I became very still, but my eyes flew open.

The villa was silent, full of indigo shadows. It was just before sunrise here—the crickets sang in the long grass, and fog veiled the orchard beyond—but I could see the brazier had caught fire. The embers had stirred; a lone blue-hearted flame danced, and white fragrant smoke began to rise.

He had written to me.

I eased myself up from the bed and stood.

My wounds throbbed in response, and I drew a tremulous breath, rolling my shoulders carefully.

The scabs held, and I took a step forward.

The marble was a cold shock on my bare feet; my dress was damp from my sweat, clinging to my legs as I took another step forward, then another.

My knees felt like water, my bones like wax poured from a candle.

I trembled and swayed, but my eyes were on that light, and it drew me like a moth.

I needed a bottle.

The one I had carried for years was still tucked away in my belt, far from me now, and I grabbed an empty vial from the table, pulling the cork free.

I knelt before the brazier, watching the flames crackle and grow. The heat was delicious, and I drew the smoke deep into my lungs.

Not too much, I warned myself. I could devour it entirely now, but I wanted to bottle his words instead, to savor them later. I could carry them on my belt for many years, listening to them again and again until the last wisp escaped.

I tilted the vial to catch the smoke.

Vincent’s words gathered within the glass like storm clouds.

And when the fire died down to glowing embers, his letter complete, I corked the vial and held it in my hand.

There was a side of me that was afraid to listen to his words. I feared they would split me open, just like the wounds on my back. I feared that once I started bleeding, I would never be able to stop it.

“What are you waiting for?” Rowena’s voice broke the quiet darkness.

I startled, glancing across the chamber to see she sat at her loom, watching me with shameless interest, her eyes reflecting the meager light as a feline’s. One of her white owls was perched on her shoulder.

“Perhaps his prayer is what you need to heal,” she added when I hesitated. The bird lifted a wing as if concurring.

“He is irreverent,” I was quick to say, but my palms had grown slick. “This is not a prayer.”

“He may be irreverent toward all of us, save for you. I think he desires to worship you.”

“I do not want him to feel like he must worship me. I do not want to change who he is, or what he believes.”

Rowena smiled. “Oh child, you are still quite young, aren’t you? He longs to worship you, but not in the way you think.”

With those words dangling in the air between us, she rose and left the villa with her owl, the two of them vanishing into the orchard’s fog.

I realized she was giving me a moment alone to listen to his words. Words that were gray as the winter sea, swirling in a bottle. I pushed myself up to my aching knees and walked back to the bed, sitting on its soft edge.

Once more, I delayed.

The sun was rising, casting shards of amber light across the floor, when I opened the bottle. I breathed in the smoke. I could hear his voice vividly, as if he sat beside me. His words filled me like rain-washed air, and for the first time since I could remember, I let myself surrender.

Dear Matilda,

You’ve been gone for three days, and I have never been so conscious of time before now. I count the hours, listening for the bells to mark them. I collect each moment that you’ve been away, and I feel them gather in my bones like winter.

I long for you.

I do not know when this happened, when

the current rose and when I let it take me, willingly, but there came a

moment when I looked at you and could not breathe. There was a moment

when I watched you depart, and I wanted to fall to my

knees.

I know that you and I come from

different realms, and that you will be prone to wander, as your magic

prompts you. And I am a man with roots and a set number of days allotted

to me. Time that I do not want to waste. My life feels brief as the dew

when I compare it to your ocean, but if you will have me, this is what I

offer you.

My home is your home. My arms are a

haven for you to rest. My last name is yours if you desire it. I will

love you to my grave, and even beyond it, when the mists welcome me,

when I am hopefully very old and gray and grouchy and have spent the

seasons beside you when you are here and dreaming of you when you are

gone.

I love you, dearly,

Red.

Come home to me. Return to me, when

you can. I will be watching the skies and the river until

then.

Yours,

Vincent