Sybil

The morning dew lights on the plants outside and my feet squelch in the cool soil as I watch the dawn fill the world with a golden glow. I feel the deep, grieving emptiness of the morning in the kitchen. There’s no kettle on the stove and a quilted skeleton handing me a mug, there’s no gentle press of Jun’s hand on my shoulder when they notice my dark mood before I do. It’s so impossibly lonely, this summer morning. I’m still in my night shift, one of Jun’s quilts wrapped around my shoulders, and the breeze tickles the thin shift cloth away from my knees.

It should be a perfect summer morning.

I look at the tall green stalks of wheat that stretch on and wave like ocean currents across the space; I see the outcropping of new buildings, wooden walls solid but roofs bare bones and the smell of sawdust in the air; I see the hats of the early morning workers already making their way through the crops; weeding and harvesting the complimentary crops, planting autumn crops. The sound of saws and hammering would start soon.

Lasis would most certainly be in the warehouse with his figures, but I don’t want to seek them out. Amelia would be amidst the crops, finger bones digging into the soil and singing to herself. Willard would be hiking in the forest behind the house. Henry would be watching the sun rise. Thinking of facing any of my bone family without my modder feels impossible: a reminder that they, too, would want me to commit them someday. “You will be the last, for all of us.” Amelia’s voice reminds me from three years ago. I am their last master. They will all want to return their energies to the earth with me. I will need to tell all of them goodbye.

Haven walked home last night with the other party-attendees from town. She’d asked if I needed anything, but I made sure she knew I was fine.

I wasn’t fine.

In any case, it’s only been a few months since we began this courting dance, and while I know I can rely on her, and on Soleil, too, who is an even newer surprise in my life–I think dragging either of them through my melt downs would be entirely unfair. Especially considering they know only half of the story: I wouldn’t be around forever.

The thought is a bitter echo that has been ringing in my skull for the past three years. Arceme might have accounted for the cozy life, but had they accounted for the constant paranoia after the Great Wars? Not that I wasn’t happy for my second chance–the joy of living was just as brilliant as the peace of death: if no less bittersweet. Jun’s commitment only reminded me of the fragility of my current timeline.

“What are you staring at?” Via asks sleepily from the doorway behind me.

“Flor…” I start slowly, my voice empty on the morning air.

I hear her hesitate. I’ve never once used her proper name. The silence stretches between us for a long moment, but anxiety does not set into my bones.

“Yes, my child?” The words aren’t spoken from the mouth of a little girl, but of an ageless goddess.

“Will Arceme come?”

“I cannot know that, Sybil.” She pauses. “Why have you called on me this way?”

“Because…” I frown. “Because I want more.” I turn to face her, and she stares up at me through small, serious eyes set into a vaguely green face. “I want to love and be loved.”

She frowns. “You have been. You’ve experienced far more contentment than you would ever had in the past life. Not since Ben–”

“It’s not permanent.”

She swallows. “No. No, it isn’t.”

“How am I supposed to love with my whole being if I’m supposed to be leaving? I’ll just leave more heartache in my wake.”

Flor steps forward and takes my hand. “It is not for me to know, Sybil. Only Arceme knows what they are doing.” A childish glint flickers through her eyes. “Besides, if I could get my hands on that slithery sibling of mine, I would. I have my own questions.”

I want to smile, but I don’t feel like smiling. I pull my hand from hers and step past her into the house, “I’m going into town, are you coming?”

Via watches me, worried. “Yeah, I’ll come.”

***

I knock gently on Soleil’s door, Via follows at a distance. She’d pretended to go hunt down Maggie when we got into town, but she wasn’t as quiet as she thought. I wasn’t deaf, and her footfalls in the quiet morning of the town were hardly silent. There’s a gentle scrambling inside the door and the door creaks open to reveal a raccoon-eyed Soleil wearing a scarf over his first two eyes–almost normal human looking.“Sybil?” he asks blearily, then with a glance down the street, opens the door and pulls me into his arms, closing it firmly behind me. His arms lift and press me against the door, and his face burrows into my neck. “Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” I lie, squeezing my arms around him. He pulls away, setting me gently on the floor, and I wrap my fingers around his face. “You look so tired,” I tell him, tugging his scarf off of his eyes. His eyes blink rapidly and he sighs in relief.

“I’ve been trying to stay awake during daylight,” he admits, “haven’t gotten my sleeping schedule sorted.”

I wince. “In the summer? Sol…”

“I know,” he rushes, “but if it will be easier for you–and besides, I need to be awake for the postage. And if a new glamour spell…” his voice drifts off and I understand what he’s saying.

It feels like a gut punch.

“Anyways, what are you doing in town? Can I make you some tea?” he asks, skuttling into the small one-room home.

“No–Sol…”

“It’s really okay,” he tells me. “With this new draft, I need to be awake at odd hours. Plus, I need to be more available for you.”

“Yeah, I’m really proud of you,” I follow him into the room. I hesitate. “I’m actually here about the roofing.”

He pauses and gives me an apologetic look. “Oh.” He scratches his stubbled face, “I’m sorry I haven’t been up yet…”

“It’s really okay,” I tell him in a rush. “I was actually going to ask if we can come get you with a wagon tonight?”

He considered this. “I didn’t think about that.” One of his legs taps thoughtfully.

“We can cover you with a tarp.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, I can ask some of the guys to come back overnight to help you.”

He dips his body down so that we’re eye level and he gently takes my elbows. “Sybil, we can wait if you need some more time to grie–”

“No,” I hurry before the tears come. “I need some routine.” I give him a broken smile. “Please?”

He rubs his jaw. “Okay. Tonight then. I’ll get some early sleep.”

“Thank you… And… Sorry to push you.”

“No, it’s okay,” he smiles at me, worry flickering in his four black eyes. “I’ll have someone watch for my postage. It will be good to have those homes ready sooner than later, too.”

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“Would you stay there?” I ask, hopeful.

He bends his forehead to press against mine, squeezing my forearms. “Until all of this blows over, yes.” He grins, “I’d get to see you more often too.”

I don’t know why that makes me feel worse, like I pushed him to do something he wasn’t comfortable with. That I was putting him in danger, but I couldn’t offer him anything in return besides money. I could barely give him my time.

I leave quickly before I can second guess myself any further. I don’t touch him. I don’t kiss him goodbye. He watches me sadly as I hurry back onto the street and back on the road home. I can’t bear the thought of it.

Haven catches me on my way out of town. “Hey,” she calls out, and jogs up the dusty street to me. “Vi got me. I didn’t know you’d be in town, are you alright?”

My chest is filled with apprehension. I don’t want to see Haven right now. I didn’t even really want to see Soleil. As much as I crave their company, I feel burdened by the fear that I may just lose everything. I was the last person alive to raise the bones, and the last to commit them. I’d already fallen in love with two people who… for all intents and purposes, loved me just as hard. And the little village where beastmen and necromancer sympathizers were becoming increasingly unsafe, I was building a place of escape for them from Herman’s rule. It was only a matter of time before Arceme took me. I’d influenced this timeline far too much.

“Hi.” I slide my hands into my pockets. Via hadn’t emerged from the alley behind Haven, but I knew she was there.

Haven doesn’t respond, but her gaze flickers over me. “Okay,” she says finally.

My heart catches in my throat. “What?”

“You need space,” she announces.

“No, I–”

Her face is sad, “It’s okay, Syb. I get it. I was the same way when my parents–” She coughs and looks down into the dirt. She regains her composure and closes the last two feet from me and squeezes me into a hug. “It’s okay. Just come back when you’re ready, okay? We’ll be here.”

I am trembling, keeping my hands in fists at my side. She doesn’t seem to mind, though. She squeezes once more and pulls away. “We’ll always be here for you, Syb.”

“Okay,” I tell her, finally, and I hate the quiver in my voice.

She squeezes my arms and turns around, following the dirt path back to her forge. She looks worn, her shoulders aren’t as straight. I steel my resolve and turn back to the road toward the farm. “Come on, Vi.” I call over my shoulder, and hear her step out from her hiding place and scurry after me.

I need to finish building the hostel for the townspeople of Reisau, and then I have to leave. Before anything more drastic happens – before anyone else gets too attached.

When I return to the farm, I throw myself into my work, rolling up my sleeves and donning my hat. Via and I don’t talk, but we work side by side, her eyes watching me closely. I bristle at it a little, but I know it comes from a good place. If there is anyone I don’t need to worry about getting too close to, it’s the only other god(dess) I have in my corner. She will see me into the next un-life, and she’ll get her chance to interrogate her sibling when she does.

Henry is pulling dead trees from the earth and helping the construction workers break it into uniform shapes to add to the growing family of bone homes. There’s a great raucous from that side of the yard: whoops and hollers of men and the crash of ancient vegetation hitting the ground, shaking the earth beneath my feet. The sound has my teeth on edge, but I know they asked the trees. I trust my bones.

“Sybil, you should take today off,” Via suggests, worried.

I grumble something about routine and yank a weed that pre-maturely tugs through the roots of some beans. I wince at the pain it shoots up my arm in warning. This little plant won’t recover from the damage of its roots. I release a whimper, but Via is already there, small fingers brushing past mine and darting into the soil. The pain retracts, and I can no longer feel its scared grasp on me. “Thank you,” I tell her.

“The weeds don’t bite you?” she asks.

“Not usually,” I shrug. “Sometimes.”

She chuckles mirthlessly. “All of them bite me,” she grimaces and shakes out her arms. “It’s tingly.”

“The weeds?”

“And the trees,” she gestures in the direction of the forest. “Not just here.”

I narrow my eyes at the soil as I tug another weed from the earth a little bit further down the line. “How do you bear all of that?”

“It’s all part of a cycle,” she shrugs. “You get used to it.”

“How long have you existed?” I wonder aloud.

She shakes her head. “That’s for me to know,” she silences me.

“Do you have parents?” I muse miserably ignoring her efforts to end the conversation, hissing as a sticker thorn gets my thumb. I yank the offender from the earth and pop the bleed in my mouth.

She rocks back onto her heels. She’s changed to children’s trousers, covered in dirt and manure, and her thin hair is wild. “Well, in a sense. It isn’t like mortals, though.”

The throbbing in my thumb has dimmed, so I dug back into the earth further down the line.

“I guess to be a world’s mother, I have to have a concept of what a mother is. Giving, loving, embracing.” She mutters, sitting on her rump and wiping her hands over her dirty knees, adding another layer of grime to the laundry we will undoubtedly have to do later. “I guess that’s what Life is to me.”

I pause, my hand freezing in midair. “Life and Death?”

“Sure, they’re my… for lack of a better term, parents, overseers, just as they are for you.”

“Arceme?”

“A sibling,” she tells me. “They’re not Death, they’re a guide of the shifts of time. Older sibling,” she adds. “Though time is… nonsense.” She gestures inarticulately a concept I have the barest concept of myself. “So older means nothing.”

“There are other gods besides you and Arceme,” I dig bitterly into the next weed.

“Sure. Lesser and greater gods alike. I am not, for example, the god of the harvest,” she chuckles, plucking a diseased leaf from a green wheat stalk. She curses something entirely unchildlike and spits. “Looks like we have aphids, sixth one this row.”

“I’ll tell Lasis we need to get some more lady beetles for this row,” I say reflexively, taking a mental note.

“You could be the god of the harvest,” she chuckles. “You’re very good at this.”

“You make it grow, I just manage the rest.”

She shrugs. “I do a great deal less than what you think I do, Sybil Whitman,” she says in her distinctive Flor voice.

I ignore her and stand, stretching my back. “Can you finish this row? I’ll go talk to Lasis.”

She sticks her tongue out at me.

As I pass her, she grabs a handful of my skirts. “Sybil,” she warns. “Whatever it is you’re trying to do, just don’t.”

I look down at her, but she’s not looking at me. I tug my skirts away. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

She looks up at me, her eyes narrowing in the light. “This self-destructive behavior is unbecoming, child. Rest, grieve, but don’t topple what you’ve spent so much time building.”

I try not to let her words echo, but goddesses have a way of letting their voices be heard. Even when we don’t want them to.

***

Lasis puts in an order for lady beetles for me, and leaves to notify some of the men to hang back after duties to work on the roofing with Soleil that night. I wander the farm, taking each feature like a woman on a doorstep saying goodbye with the grocery notes. I am quiet, I smile, I try to remain calm as can be, but I am devising an escape plan. I map out in my mind the next steps of my plan. Simon has learned to commit bones to the earth during last night’s ceremony. He will be able to do it well for years to come. The magic will not frenzy on the farm. It’s already so self-sufficient, between beastmen, men, and bones. Once Via leaves, it will be as much a natural farm as any.

For the first time in sixteen years, I let myself think of my older brother, Ben. How he disappeared suddenly. One night he was sitting on the rock down by the river, showing me how to skip stones. The next morning, his space was empty at the breakfast table. I wonder if this is what he did. I wonder how long he spent in the planning stages. Was it weeks? Years? Or did it come upon him in the night, like it did me? The need to flee. To slip out before anyone noticed because saying goodbye was too painful?

As the sun begins to arc from the pinnacle of the sky toward the horizon, I gather a bundle in my room and set off into the forest behind the house. I etch some sigils into the earth on the edge of the farm: pressing my energy into the farm so that the bones can continue to live their own second lives without my close proximity. It’s exhausting, but it feels like a period to the sentence that punctuated the last three years. The end of a chapter.

The silence surrounds me in the late afternoon haze as I walk. I step over fallen logs and around giant boulders, I listen to the birds in the trees and feel the mushrooms in the mulch beneath the pine needles and rotting leaves. I head north-east.

It isn’t until nightfall that I feel the familiar energy press against mine: clay and bone, gentle and protective. I hesitate. “Henry?”

They are sixty feet behind me from the direction of the farm, and their magic presses into mine in a concerned greeting as strong as if I was beside them. I bite down a bitter sorrow. The one construct who came before me, and who would follow me to the ends of the earth, the first and the last of my family.

As much as I wanted to be alone, it felt fitting for us to travel together. I slow in my walk so they can catch up, and we walk through the forest side by side. They lift branches out of my way as I scramble up and over obstacles until my feet can’t carry me any further, and the light is impossible to walk through safely.

They make a makeshift wind block for me and sit beside me as I start the fire.

They don’t sign to me, but their magic is a comfortable weight around me. They’re not judging, only worried. Only caring. They will follow me wherever I go, I realize. Even if mine was not the origin magic that made its body move.

“How long have you been with me?” I wonder aloud.

They don’t answer, only tilt their head up at the sky.

I curl up against their humerus, ready to fall asleep, when their skull snaps toward the direction of the farm, and their magic floods me with their fear. Soleil.