Storms and his League have held back the demon since it was imprisoned. That is enough. Let it alone.”
Miranda flushed and took a step forward, her mouth already open to challenge the mountain again, but Slorn’s hand on her shoulder stopped her cold. She looked back to see the bear-headed Shaper staring up at the mountain, his yellow teeth bared.
“Were you just a Great Spirit, I would accept that logic,” he growled. “But I am not the man I was ten years ago.” He raised his hand and placed his longer fingers across his muzzle, the tips pointed at his large, brown, bear eyes. “I have seen many things since I merged with the bear. Learned many things that spirits have been taught never to speak of. But I am not a simple spirit. I am human. A human who sees as we were never meant to see, and I see you now, Durain, Lord of the Mountains.”
“Stop,” the mountain said.
But Slorn did not stop. “I thought the spirits deferred to you because of your great age and size. Now I see I was only half right. I see her mark on your soul. You are a star, a chosen spirit of the Shepherdess, elevated above all others. You are right. It would be intolerably risky for the Shapers to work on this problem alone, but we don’t have to, do we? You can bring my knowledge to the Shepherdess herself—”
“Enough!” The mountain quaked, nearly knocking Miranda off her feet. Slorn stumbled too, but caught himself at the last moment. His eyes, however, never left the mountain.
“I begin to understand at last why the Shepherdess made your kind blind,” the mountain said, its voice deep and annoyed. “Even though you see, you do not understand.” The stone’s shaking fell off to a slight vibration, almost like a sigh.
“What don’t we understand?” Slorn said.
“Anything,” the mountain grumbled, lowering its voice. “To start, you’re right. I am a star of the Shepherdess, but the meaning of that title has changed over the long years.” Its voice grew wistful. “We old souls were the greatest spirits left at the beginning. When the Shepherdess came into being and was given charge of the sphere, we worked together. She gave us her mark, her authority, which she herself had been given by the Creator, and made us her overseers. We were her hands in the world, keeping order among those spirits of our own kind. My twin brother and I were tasked with watching the mountains, and it took us both, for in those days all the mountains were awake. But then the world changed. The demon appeared.”
The snow around the mountain began to swirl angrily. “Such a thing was supposed to be impossible. We gave up our freedom and entered the shell specifically to keep their kind out, and yet here was a demon, right among us. To this day, no one knows how it got in, but it destroyed half the world before the Shepherdess and her weapon, the Lord of Storms, cornered it. By that time the demon was so large the Shepherdess could not destroy it without breaking the world itself in the process. In the end, there was only one solution. It was my brother who made the sacrifice. He gave up his stone and his name to trap the demon so that we might live in peace. The Shepherdess took his body and buried the demon beneath it, fixing the prison in place with her seal. The moment the seal was in place, my brother’s verdant slopes were abandoned, and his corpse became what we now call the Dead Mountain.”
“Your twin brother,” Miranda said, her face pale and her eyes wide. “You mean a mountain as large as you died to trap the demon?”
“Not died,” the Shaper Mountain said. “Not entirely, though you would not recognize him if you saw him now.”
The snow swirled, and Miranda shuddered as the weight of the mountain’s full attention landed on them. “I tell you this, Heinricht, so that you may understand what those ill-gotten eyes of yours see. I may be her star, but it is the Shepherdess who rules this sphere, not us. Star or no, I am as much a slave to the Lady’s will as any broken pebble.”
“But you are no pebble,” Slorn said. “You are the greatest spirit left in the world. And if you will do nothing —”
“You are a Shaper, Heinricht,” the mountain said. “It is your nature to see a broken thing and wish to fix it. But this is our world, not a broken sword. We cannot simply reshape it into something better. We must live as the Shepherdess commands and hope things change before we all grow too sleepy and stupid to care.”
Slorn frowned. “Too sleepy?”
“This world you know is a sad, diminished shadow,” the mountain said. “Every year, more spirits fall asleep and do not wake. Of all my mountains, only a handful still answer when I call. The spirits grow small and stupid. They forget what lies beyond, what came before. But those of us who were Shaped by the Creator himself, we remember. We know the truth…”
As the mountain’s voice faded, the landscape began to change. The snow slowed, and then stopped. The light shifted from slate gray to golden yellow as the icy clouds evaporated. Sunlight burst down onto the field, and the snowdrifts began to melt before Miranda’s eyes. As they melted, flowers pushed their heads through the ice, opening in tiny bursts of color as the shrinking snowbanks gave way to bright green grass. But the flowers died almost as quickly as they had bloomed, their petals dropping to the grass, which was now fading to dead brown. The mountains vanished beneath a blanket of snow yet again as the meadow withered. But no sooner was the snow on the ground than it began to vanish, and the cycle began again.
Each time it was faster. The meadow and the mountains flashed between snow and life, blooming flowers, withered grass, and crusted snow trading places in breathless transition. Miranda shrank back against Gin, clutching his fur, but the ghosthound offered no comfort. His orange eyes were shut tight, and he was whining deep in his throat as the landscape around them melted, greened, bloomed, withered, and froze over and over again until Miranda was nearly sick from change.
Unlike Gin, Slorn’s eyes were wide open. He was standing with his head tilted back, staring open-mouthed at the sky. Miranda swallowed and, against her better judgment, followed his gaze up. She was immediately sorry. The sky was changing just as fast as the world around them, flashing between day and night so rapidly it almost made her retch. But before she could look away, the cycle of dawn, day, dusk, and dark began to slow. At last, it stopped altogether, leaving her staring up at a night sky unlike anything she had ever seen.
She never knew how long they stared in silence. It felt like a lifetime. When she finally found her voice, the words came out more air than sound.
“What are they?”
“I don’t know,” Slorn answered just as quietly.
High overhead, cast around the crescent moon like scattered sand, points of light shone against the black velvet curve of the night sky. There were thousands of them, millions, more than Miranda could count if she spent the rest of her life doing nothing else. The twinkling lights seemed to gather at the middle of the sky, forming a road of light so beautiful and enormous, it brought tears to her eyes.
“This is my memory,” the mountain said, its voice drifting on the gentle wind. “Here at my center, I am free of what the Shepherdess would have us forget. Here I remember the world as it was before, when time moved forward, when there were seasons and lights in the sky beside the sun and the moon. Back when there was no need for a Shepherdess. Back when every spirit woke and slept as it chose, when there were no humans, no wizards, and we hunted our own demons.”
As the mountain spoke, the beautiful night sky full of lights faded. The valley faded, too, so did the mountains, and Miranda found herself standing beside Slorn and Gin in the plain white room.
“But that world is gone,” the mountain said, his disembodied voice echoing through the empty chamber. “Broken, eaten, lost forever. We live in the Shepherdess’s world now. If I question her methods, even to bring a new idea, even I could end up like Gredit.”
“Gredit?” Slorn said, stepping forward. “You know what happened to the Great Bear?”
“We all know,” the mountain said. “Before, stars were named so because they were the greatest, the only spirits large enough to watch over their own. But the Shepherdess picks her own stars now. Small spirits, creatures not even worthy of the name, elevated only because the Shepherdess found them beautiful. Even now she ignores the world to play her favorites against each other for no reason other than she likes to be fought over. Gredit, stubborn, noble old bear, thought he could make her see sense. To that end, he made the mistake of threatening her current favorite darling, and she killed him for it.”
Slorn made a keening sound deep in his throat. Miranda flinched. It was the most animal sound she’d ever heard him make.
“With my twin dead, I am the last of the great mountains,” the Teacher said. “I cannot leave my sleeping
