El and Onine (17 page)

“Was it Tiro?” she asked. “Who killed my goat?”

I leaned forward to stir the ashes with a rod,
though I could have used my hands.

“Did Tiro come and ki—”

“Eat.” I held out the bowl with the elixir. “It’s
sweet.”

I wished I could have stayed with her. I wished I
could have kept the elixir from her and held her a little longer, but the eye
was rising and she would be gone soon.

She took the bowl and held it to her nose, and then
brought the cup to her mouth and suffered the drink.

“You don’t need the covering,” I said, anticipating
her question. I stood up and prepared to go. She would be asleep again in
moments. I passed through the fire to sit on the other side, and waited for her
to fade away.

“Tal …”

Onine
, I wished to say. “Sleep,
clay-born goddess.”

“Onine …” she said, as she slipped into darkness
again.

The possibility of her actually recognizing me made
my flesh tingle, but it was impossible. To her, I was Tal and would remain so.
I waited for her to fall deeper under the spell of the potion Saturnia’s sister
had mixed for her. My sibling told me I must wait until the dreams began before
returning her to the field. “The potion must work through her,” she had said.
“You will know when she is ready.”

I watched her sleep, imagining her beauty in the
darkness. The fire died out and when her body started to twitch I picked her up
in my arms and carried her back to the field where she would await his arrival.
Before I left her, I covered her in the veil for the last time.

I saw her again when Midan had breached Terra’s
sphere and paid my apprentice his due. I skulked on the underside of the rock
ledge until I caught her scream on the air. I bounded through Tiro’s ashy pile
and swept her up for the third time since I had become the fire starter. She
saw the reptile despite my speed and I hoped her reflection was only mildly terrifying.
He would look as she imagined since she could only see her version of Midan,
not his true form. I had wanted to get her off the ledge and into the field before
he realized I had taken her but he proved quicker than I expected and Tal’s
form was more cumbersome than I recalled.

I barreled down the mount with El in my arms and
Midan at my heels. Once I reached the wheat field, I felt my energy wane.
Sapient stamina was limited. I was about midway in the field when Midan and his
troop surrounded me. The ten rebels had taken ugly terrestrial forms since they
still needed to be purified in the molten liquid of their home planet. They reminded
me of the Hephaestes who lived on the dark side of Venus, those we banished to the
trenches deep below our planet’s volcanic surface.

“Give the goddess to me,” Midan said.

The troop of ancient Venusian, forged long before Ur
had created Kypria, voiced their assent at Midan’s command with shrieks and
screeches. They were unwilling to submit to my goddess on Venus, but now wanted
her because she was their only salvation. Soon after we abandoned our volcanic
home, those who stayed realized their flames would suffer without my goddess.
Midan destroyed the planet’s source of fire when he turned it to jade, and the Venusian
were dying because of their rebellion.

“The creature is mine,” Midan said.

I held his stare for a moment, sensing Saturnia’s
sister approach. None of them recognized me, believing me to be sapient, but
they knew the Kyprian healer and backed off when she entered their circle.

“Put her down, sapient,” she said. “The goddess
belongs to Midan.”

I trusted my sibling. We had prepared for this, made
our plan. I lowered my arms and laid El on the ground in front of me. The serum
had done its magic and she was asleep again. I dreaded the thought of her
waking without me but had to let her go.

“Come, Midan.” Saturnia’s sister led him through the
field. “We shall take her to the hall of stones where she can wait for you while
you bathe. If you are to survive Terra, even for one moonscape, you must all see
to your form.”

The foolish aliens trusted the Venusian healer and
followed my sibling just as we expected. The ambassador paid little attention
to me despite my stealing his prize. I could only reason he saw me as we had
first seen the sapients—mere hums and drones on the landscape. They were
taken to the baths and El was brought to the hall of stones where Saturnia’s
sister showed her what she needed to see. I was told to keep away. I was
supposed to wait for her at the shanty but I needed to say a final goodbye. I had
learned a bit of Kyprian magic from the healer, though she was unaware of my
dabbling, and would slip into my terrestrial form one last time.

When I pulled myself from Tal’s body, I was
determined to make use of Onine’s once more.

“I thought the fusion was complete,” Tal said, as he
faced me in El’s shanty. “I thought this body was dead.”

“Not yet.” I wanted to explain but could not. I
needed to give Kypria the chance to see me as I was, as she would remember me. Tal
was easy to put under. I tapped the center of his forehead with my stick and he
lost consciousness. I left him asleep between the rows of cabbages until I
returned to take his form again.

I hid outside the hall of stones and waited for the
torture to end. It took every ounce of my courage to stay and watch my Kyprian
sibling take her new form. When I saw her limbs stretch up to the sky, leafy
and green, I felt elation as I had never experienced it before. I will admit it
was worse waiting outside the hall, knowing my goddess would suffer the
ravishment, but I was resilient when El’s screams reached me where I hid. Her
suffering haunts me still, even if I gain some relief with the passing of each
moonscape.

When the villains left the hall, the horizon had
almost swallowed the eye. The troop headed for the greenhouses on the mount,
thinking they had won my goddess with their fire. Midan stole away with two of
the jade stones in his maw and the other on his back. I went into the hall and witnessed
the horror of their destruction. Kypria’s power was gone and the tree of life uprooted.
It had died when I consumed its energy, but the sight of it pulled up from the
soil inspired me.

I turned my attention to my sibling and admired the last
Kyprian healer. She stood strong, alive, vibrant, unbending in will and force.
I wanted to feel the rind that surrounded her and kiss her rich leaflets but I refrained
from striking her with my fire, if any was left in Onine’s form. I loved her
from afar, promising to return to see her with my goddess.

I picked up my beloved Kypria and carried her out into
the darkness. I decided to leave her on the path, a place she would recognize
when she woke. I kept my distance until the serum had done its work. I was certain
their flame had failed to take hold of her womb since they lost my goddess long
ago, when we first arrived on Terra and Kypria chose Mara to be her sapient
creator. “I will come into being a second time through that wanting creature,”
my goddess had said. “My birth will beautify her and she will be called Minosh—my
terrestrial mother—and I will be her Pchi, the first born.”

I had misunderstood the sapient terms then, what
they meant, what they would come to mean. My goddess had seen the words written
in the tome and understood them when she met Mara. They were some of the first
words she taught the sapient when she reared her to be her maternal figure. Only
now can I see the power of the creator and her creation, the womb and its gift of
life. Ur had given me that gift when he allowed me to carry his progeny in
mine. He made me for that reason, to place Kypria in her sapient cultivator, to
give her true terrestrial life so she could bring a new race of beings into
existence.

“My progeny will be mortal,” she had said to me. “A
new species for Terra’s landscape.”

“A creature of fire and clay,” I had said, wanting
to tell my goddess I would cherish Tal’s union with El and the mortals to come,
even if she already knew.

I was relieved when I saw El reject the substance on
the tarnished stones. “Their implant did not take.” I floated to her side when
she cried out to me. “You are safe for now. They have not taken you.” I looked
down at my precious goddess and felt the whole of her agony reflected in me.
The sadness overwhelmed my terrestrial form, though I resisted reaching for her.

“I—I—don’t understand,” she said.

“We must go.”

“Am I?”

“Yes and no.”

“But I saw—”

“Be patient, clay-born goddess.” I longed to feel
her flame one last time, as we spoke in the language of our origin. “You will
know everything again. It will come back to you when you choose.”

“I’ve seen things—I’ve seen things I can’t
forget.”

“Yes,” I said. “But we cannot change anything now.
We must move forward with the plan.”

“The plan?”

“Be patient, goddess. Let me bring you home.” I picked
her up to hold her in my arms again. Our touch was nothing to fear. By then, we
were both ready.

“Is this a dream?”

“No. This is real.”

I carried her in silence though I could see the million
questions in her mind as clearly as the blush on her cheeks. When she asked if
she was my youngling I replied the only way I could. “No, but you do come from
me.” I looked away—it was too painful.

“I am ruined—spoiled by their invasion.”

I held her more tightly, wanting to pull her into my
skin and make her one with me. “You are perfect.” She seemed to drift off and I
repeated it, willing the phrase to soften her sleep and convince her it was
true.

When we reached the shanty, I placed her on her bed
of silks. I should have summoned Tal then and made Onine disappear forever, but
I held on to my terrestrial form until the last moment. I wanted her to
recognize me—herself in me. Tal was still unconscious between the
cabbages and I knew he would sleep until I called him. Her small voice shook me
from my meditation.

“How are you here with me now in the darkness?”

When I told her I would leave soon, she asked me to
stay.

“The danger is not over,” I said. “Midan is here and
you will have to choose.”

“Choose what?”

My direction frustrated her. She had been told to
choose many times, and still misunderstood the choice she was to make—the
choice she had already made.

I reminded her of Saturnia’s sister, the tree she
had become. I frightened El, forgetting she was unaware that my Kyprian sibling
had embraced the transformation. “She revels in the pleasure you have given
her. She knew you would choose them.”

“Who?”

“Sapient.” When I said the word, the veil was
lifted. Suddenly El’s face changed and she smiled like I had never seen her
smile before.

“Who were the others?”

“The unpledged ones,” I said. “Midan’s troop.”

“Who is—” She stopped herself, realizing she knew
who Midan was. Her face changed again, her smile fading when she recalled the
ambassador, the slick jade trader, the dark passage, the destruction of our
planet—Venus—and who she was.

“I am Kypria.”

“Yes, goddess. You are Kypria.” I stood before her
as I once was—a flame to her fire.

“And I must choose between the new species I will
forge and my Venusian retinue, my beloved—you.”

“Yes.” I basked in the recognition for only a brief
moment, though it healed a lifetime of woe. “Time is running out. The troop
will return at the rise of the eye.”

“But how can I choose?”

“You already have, my goddess. Saturnia’s sister is
proof of that. Finish what you have started and begin the world anew. Make
Terra a lush and verdurous land again, repopulate the planet with dual beings
like you—fire and clay—mortals, as you call them. Bear the seed of
the sapient and birth into existence a generation of beautiful mortals.”

I tried to mask the sadness in my voice. I only mourned
the loss of the Venusian. I almost failed when she said she would never give us
up, that she could never sacrifice her most beloved Kyprian for another. Her
resolution was the danger my sibling had warned me of when she told me to keep
the truth from El before it was done. I had gone outside of the plan, had
risked a last reunion, and so worked to convince her as quickly as I could.

“We will live among you. You will see us in Terra’s
nature, her organisms, her soil, her people. The Kyprian will never leave you.”
She was to remain ignorant of that truth, and even Tal was to be a mere sapient
in her eyes. My existence through him was to be a secret since she was to believe
I was gone forever. But I was desperate to convince her this was only the beginning,
even if I had to refrain from revealing my identity. “This is the genesis,” I
said. “You are on the cusp of the most important choice and though you have
made it already, do not stand in your own way.”

She looked at me hard and admired me for the last
time. My foolishness, my final tinker with fate, made me eager to return to the
sapient form. I wanted to begin our life as dual beings at once—fire and
clay—but I had put myself in this predicament and had to work out of it
before I could summon Tal.