When her awareness expands to the sea, she recalls the warnings of her mother. A realization grows. She is granting too much to the aether, but the will to heed those warnings begins to wane, while the desire to lose herself in the vibrant currents grows.
The ocean teems with life. Fish and coral and mollusks and the great white goedrun that make long sea voyages so difficult. And the air. Though the sun has yet to rise, and the winds are high, there are thousands of gulls swooping along the southern cliffs, diving for fish. Grouse are sleeping in their nests. Owls continue to hunt.
She knows that she is becoming lost, that she is coming ever closer to the point where she will no longer be able to return to her body, but she has lost the will to care. The life and death surrounding her is too beautiful for her to willingly turn her eyes away.
And then a note-the pluck of a single harp string-calls to her. She senses, among the chaos, the minds of the other Matri. She feels them supporting her, willing her return. They are too distant to offer much beyond this, but the realization that they are there is enough. She draws herself inward, focusing more closely on the spire.
Returning to the lessons drummed into her so many years ago, she attunes herself with the spire. Her soul reverberates against its power. It drives her. She feels the whorls and eddies around the island. They are strong, but it is not so difficult to amplify them, to focus it southwest toward the spire on Duzol, and the two beyond that on Grakhosk and Yfa, and eastward to the other islands in Khalakovo. Soon, like a spider on her web, she is in tune with all seven spires, strengthening them, guiding the currents of aether among them. It is something that Saphia does without thinking, but for Atiana, it takes minutes, hours.
Some time later-she knows not how long-a whorl appears.
So lost is she in her task that she doesn’t recognize the source, but soon she comes to realize it is not so far from where she lies, nearly frozen, deep beneath the palotza.
She propels herself southwest of Volgorod, along the coast, beyond the eyrie and toward the shifting currents. She hovers outside a home sitting near the shoreline, hidden in a strip of forest. It is nearly black among the thin currents of the aether, and inside there is a woman, bright blue, nearly white. She kneels before a cradle, staring down at the babe lying within it. Though Atiana can hear no sounds, it is clear the tiny girl is crying-her mouth wide open, her eyes puffy, no doubt from the sheer intensity and duration of her fit. The babe’s imprint in the aether, like her mother’s, like all creatures of this plane, is blue, but there is a tinge of yellow, lending her a greenish tint.
Curious, Atiana floats closer, sensing a hunger from the child, a hatred. She has no idea how this could be, or why, but she does know one thing.
As surely as the wind blows, this child is dying.
CHAPTER 23
Though the child is dying, Atiana is powerless to prevent it.
The woman picks up the child and holds her against her bared breast, but the child will have nothing to do with it. The mother holds the babe tight and rocks her, shushes at her ear, but it helps not at all.
Mother, she calls. Mother, please hear me.
There is no response. She tries to reach Saphia, but she is asleep and will remain so for hours, perhaps even a day or more.
Currents swirl around the darkening babe. She is tainted blue still, and a tinge of green remains, but she is fading to midnight, the color of the stout brick walls or the thick pine beams running along the ceiling.
Pressure builds around Atiana. She feels tight, crowded. She is new to the currents of the dark. She knows this. But she knows that this should not be. The aether, though it stands between the worlds, is not bounded in such ways. Adhiya’s presence can be seen, but it cannot be felt. The same is true of Erahm. What then, could be pressing in on her so?
The pressure becomes worse. She feels constricted, choked, feels as though the breath is being pressed from her slowly but surely.
And then, as the light from the babe fades altogether, the feeling is gone.
She is unable to focus on these feelings, for she is too caught up with the emotions that are clear on the face of the mother.
Though she may not realize it yet, she holds a dead child. It is all Atiana can do not to call out. She might try to touch the woman, to give her some indication of what has happened, but before she can the woman realizes. She shakes the babe-not violently, but enough to wake a sleeping child. She begins to cry, and she shakes her daughter harder. She holds her up, listening for signs of life.
Then she leans her head back and unleashes her pain to the fates. She hugs the babe to her chest, tenderly yet fiercely, her whole body wracking from the realization.
Atiana feels ashamed that she cannot share in the woman’s grief. She watches for a long time, wishing she could have helped in some small way, but in the end she can no longer stomach the limitations of the aether, and she pulls away.
When Atiana woke, it was not like waking after a full night’s sleep, nor was it like stirring from a lazy daydream-it was more like those dreams she had had as a child where she was standing at the edge of the tall black cliffs near Vostroma’s palotza, staring down at the churning sea, her stomach bubbling with a mixture of excitement and fear. She was convinced in those dreams she could fly, though it would still take her long minutes to summon the courage to leap into the air like the wide-winged gulls flying far below her. Her stomach would lift as she plummeted, and she would wake with a gut-churning jolt to find herself sitting stock upright, breathing deeply in the cold air of the bedroom she shared with her sisters.
So it was now as she sat upright in the drowning chamber, frigid water splashing around her. She fully expected to find herself in the darkness of Galostina, but of course she did not. She was somewhere else entirely.
The light of the nearby fire was low, yet she was forced to clench her eyes in order to bear it. It took Atiana long moments-her eyes tearing and blinking involuntarily-until she realized Victania was sitting on a chair close to the fireplace. She was watching Atiana, silent, her face devoid of emotion.
And then the past came rushing back. The Matra’s summons. Her request. Atiana’s eventual capitulation.
Already her time in the dark was fading, a dream that only moment ago had been reality. As she had been taught, she began reliving the moments backwards, so that one link in the chain would reveal the next, and the next. It worked to a degree, but she was unable to remember everything. There was something crucial missing. Something terribly disturbing.
Her eyes began to acclimate.
“Do you require help?” Victania asked, her voice echoing against the harsh stone walls.
It was insulting, what Victania had just done. She knew as well as any that those who had just surfaced from the dark required help. Her question was an attempt to make Atiana feel small.
Atiana shook her head while struggling to gain her feet. The water dripped noisily from her arms and hair and breasts as she steadied herself on the basin’s stone walls. Her legs could hardly support her weight and her arms were little better. She stepped out onto the granite floor, and her knee buckled. She fell to the floor, her head crashing hard against the stone.
Victania was at her side in a moment, helping her to her feet. As Atiana steadied herself, Victania held out a handtowel, a brief look of regret on her face. When Atiana did not accept it, she motioned with it toward Atiana’s head. “You’re bleeding.”
Atiana took it, wincing as she pressed it against the lump that was already forming. Victania, using a large white cloth, scrubbed the goat’s fat economically from Atiana’s naked frame. Then she helped Atiana into a thick woolen robe.
It was warm-almost too warm after the bottomless cold of the water. Atiana’s skin began to prickle, but she let it, for it was a welcome tether to reality.
Victania motioned to the Matra’s padded chair, then made her way to the hearth, where a kettle hung from
