The faculties of the southern heathen are simply unsuited to the rigors of reason which Inventions require. The savage of Wave’s Lament cares not for the rules of locomotion or the properties of metal. There is only one star to which the Waves attest:

The present mood of their ever-fickle Goddess.

  The sudden, ferocious storm sank and dissipated. From its sagging corpse, a damp cloud billowed towards shore. Cold as ice, the mist blanketed the delta where the Dragon met the sea; it coated palm trees, obscured the streets, and brought the city of Wave’s Lament to a standstill.

  From the mist, a ghost ship emerged.

  The Cecille Gothic sailed silently, trailing oil from its gaping wounds and belching mist from its bent smokestacks. One of its twin screws jutted upright through the poop deck, and nothing remained of the other.

  Though rudderless, the ship somehow managed to swerve neatly between the cargo barges, past the grand piers, and into the Dragon’s mouth.

  For a moment, the ghost ship dared to sail onwards into eternity, cloaked in mist.

  The river mud disagreed.

  It ran aground in the mouth of the Dragon, bow grinding to a halt two paces shy of a private fisherman’s pier. Groaning like a dying beast, it sank deeper into the silt and listed dangerously to port.

  One final belch of mist, and the vessel finally surrendered to the tropical sun.

  The mist lingered, defiant, to coat the houses and chill the citizens of Wave’s Lament. A hundred thousand souls lived at the mouth of the Dragon, but none remained who had seen this mist firsthand.

  The Cecille Gothic’s final wake rolled outwards. A thousand feet away, it jostled a dredger where father and son ate their lunch in the shade of a linen tarp. Burnt as dark as their hull, they munched bread and shared a single jug of thin wine. Neither could have pinpointed the importance of the mist, and neither asked.

  Areligious and disinterested – these were the first mortals to witness the returned Goddess.

  At first, neither father nor son paid much attention to the fugitive who hopped from the destroyed poop deck. Far more interesting was the ship itself, a corpse awash in dew, and the panicked response of the people on the pier.

  The son noticed first. He bit into his bread, blinked, and mumbled, “There’s a lady on the water.”

  “What?” The father sipped his wine. “She’s like to get hit by a barge, then. This isn’t the Dragon Dance.”

  “I can’t see her serpent,” the boy continued.

  “Are you daft, boy? It’ll be under the water.”

  “I guess that makes sense on account of it being the elemental beast of water,” the son reasoned with visible effort.

  The woman hurried across the water, trailing a traveler’s cloak shaped of mist. She paused a moment, spared a glance backwards like a shamed child, and then increased her pace.

  “Did she get mauled by a cragbear?” the boy asked as she approached. The woman’s clothes were shredded to rather tantalizing tatters…

  But wasn’t it heresy to wear cerulean and pearl white, the Stormmother’s colors, and walk the Dragon like one of the anointed dancers?

  “She risks Tempest fury,” the father spat, sketching the three loops of the water blessing. Not to be confused with the three spirals of Aure’s fire, of course.

  “She can dance in my name!” the boy volunteered.

  “That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day,” his father agreed, and they chuckled together.

  A hundred feet away, the woman slowed enough to notice her attire. She plucked at the threads, grimaced, and raised her fingertips to her collarbone. She swept her fingers down confidently, and the cloak of mist curled inward. The droplets sank into her flesh, darkening her skin to the sun-kissed cocoa of this land.

  “That’s a new one,” the father grunted. Well, he wouldn’t tell a witch what magic was what if she wouldn’t whine about the pace of dredging.

  Ignoring them, she considered her rags.

  Behind her, the Cecille Gothic lost a sheet of tattered metal. The shrapnel crashed into the pier and generated a wave across the Dragon.

  “Watch yourself!” the father hollered.

  The strange witch ignored his warning, busy spinning cerulean fabric between her hands from nothing but dew.

  “Eh, her serpent can deal with it,” he shrugged. It was too hot for panic. If she was a witch in the grace of the Maiden, she wouldn’t ever drown. If she claimed colors without the Goddess’ blessing, the river would claim its due soon enough.

  The wave caught the woman by the ankles and threw her high. She flailed in the air, swearing loudly, and fell into the shallow water.

  A long moment passed.

  “Guess she was a fake after all,” the man muttered.

  Then the witch exploded into view. She landed atop the water, now sporting a snug, pearl bandeau and a cerulean sarong. Spitting river gunk, she drew the water from her new clothes with annoyed flicks of her fingers.

  The father swore and warded himself again Those were the colors of a high priestess! Was this mad woman trying to provoke the Tempest?!

  Belatedly, the witch noticed her audience. She smiled wanly for the two and planted a hand on her hip. “Someone really should put a sign up: ‘slippery when wet’.”

  The son chuckled dimly.

  “I’m hopeless…I know,” she told the boy, sparing a glance at the vessel behind her.

  “Get back to work, boy,” the father chided, smacking his son. “If this one’s a high priestess, I’ll eat my hat.”

  She planted her hands on her hips. “Osman of the river, son of Musa, I wear what I please.”

  Her name-fishing spell did not impress him either. “I’ve watched the Dragon’s Dance since I was too young to walk, and I’ve never seen you.”

  Osman of the river raised his wineskin for a final swig.

  “Wine will curdle your mind in this heat,” the woman offered.

  Instead of wine, glacial water hit Osman’s lips. He coughed and sputtered, the arctic water cold enough to burn.

  “Good day now, Osman and son,” she offered, sashaying to the shore.

  Osman scowled, pouring the wineskin at arm’s length. Icy water poured out…and out…and out…

  His son peered at the endless flow. “That’s a new one too.”

  Osman grunted, pitching the skin to the deck. “What good is a wineskin of water?!”

  Whoever that strange witch was, she had no respect for the Goddess!

***

  Lynne remembered this road. A dirty footpath winding the edge of the river reeds; chattering women with water on their heads; the songs of morning and home. Once or twice a season, a crocodile would burst out from the grass and cause a stir.

  Except now the road was paved and painted, three lanes of concrete lined by neatly trimmed palm trees. A set of tracks ran the center lane, and benches lined the intersections. Every fifty steps there was another pavilion or pier, offering shade for the crowds who would come once a year to watch the faithful dance on water.

  She lingered in the shade of one alcove, alone on the road. Lunch in this climate was no time for business, after all. Cafes lined every intersection, offering iced beverages, shade, and radio. If the stiff price of a chill drink was too steep, then a man could join the workmen napping in the copses until the temperature sank to a sane level.

  They slept in the shadow, dreaming of the glimmering sea.

  None remarked on a young priestess in blue hurrying across the Dragon, flanked by her serpent. Woman and elemental beast, joined by blood and devotion, like the sea and the shore. She slowed, gawking at the Cecille Gothic, and her serpent splashed her backside with a flash of ebony scales.

  A new mist rose up over the landscape.

  No, just tears in Lynne’s eyes.

  “I’m home.”

  Trolleys ran the streets, and ironclads waited at anchor, but no amount of gasoline could mask the scent of spice and river. The smell of home.

  She turned to regard her domain.

  Wave’s Lament rested in the shelter of a half-bowl formation that jutted out of the delta bog. Great stone ribs, stained with crimson splatters, rose a thousand feet into the air. The outer layer was cracked and splintered from dozens of impressive impacts, and the inner slope had been painstakingly carved into neat terraces. The shell itself was cracked straight down the center, admitting the Dragon and separating the city into two major districts.

  Legends said that this shell of stone was the corpse of a monstrosity, slain by the Tempest before history. The Stormmother had cracked the beast in half, and the Maiden had set its husk in the center of her domain. This was why the shell filtered Dragon water of its mud into dozens of pure wells.

  This legend was true.

  In Lynne’s absence, the city had swollen to the very edge of its bounds. Before the Stormmother departed, only mystics meditated on the jagged spines at the height of the shell; now, ramshackle districts teetered there, barely held together by metal and wire. New, paved roads crisscrossed the formerly pastoral upper terraces, and a half-constructed suspension bridge rose on either side of the Dragon.

  She wiped the tears from her cheeks.

  How they grow in my absence. They are better this way.

  Better that the age of gods fade into legend. This was the Archangel’s wisdom – that man should walk his own path unfettered.

  And what of my wisdom? a rebellious whisper asked in her head.

  Involuntarily, the angel of oceans glanced at the wreck of the Cecille Gothic. A throng surrounded the boat, both aiding the survivors and examining the handiwork of a power beyond mortal ken.

  “There is my wisdom,” she whispered bitterly. “A woman enraptured by her own waters.”

  Her regrets could drown a fish.

  She was here on a mission.

  She marched towards the harbor. No magic necessary to track Donovan from there.

  A trolley rang behind her, and she had to hop over to allow its passage. It chugged along its track, trailing steam, and the people inside hardly noticed the woman on the road. Open to the air, gaily painted with flowers and serpents, the vehicle coasted to a stop at the intersection ahead.

  Lynne trailed after.

  This district had been a slum when she left; now it was paved with brick and neatly trimmed trees. Cafes and boutiques competed for every inch of precious road-front space, and a white stone path led to a private dock full of pleasure crafts.

  A constable in his security booth glanced towards the goddess. He sat on a stool, lunch on his thighs and knees blocking the exit from the booth. Behind him, two men clad in full body black waited on his leisure.

  Lynne paused. “These men rest?” she asked, gesturing to the convicts.

  In Wave’s Lament, color marked status as clearly as bearing. Only the chosen might wear cerulean, the shade of blue favored by the Goddess herself. Certain noble houses reserved this or that color as the result of longstanding boons. Commoners wore their cottons dyed what colors remained free, more practicality than fashion. Finally, felons wore stifling black under the burning sun until they paid their sentence in hard labor or died of exhaustion.

  The constable adjusted his cap. “Yes, priestess.”

  “Convicts no longer work through the noon hour?”

  He frowned suspiciously. “No, priestess.”

  “When was this declared?”

  “Before my time,” he said. He was not a young man.

  “Why?”

  “The high priestess of the time declared it a waste. Why drive the men to death? Better that they live to finish their sentence.”

  Then a high priestess thought to reverse the proclamation of a god? It was the word of the Tempest that those beyond her embrace should toil until their bodies broke. Let criminals learn the mercy of the depths.

  “A wise woman,” Lynne noted.

  May they grow to forget the cruel storm.

  One of the silent convicts noticed that this strange priestess did not sweat in the heat, and he scooted further away.

  The constable opened his mouth to ask annoying questions, but Lynne swept on her way.

  Shrugging, he decided not to pursue the matter. The Tempest would pass judgement in her own time.

  Lynne followed the road to the quiet dock where Donovan had stepped ashore. The smuggler’s caravel awaited repairs, its sails shredded and mast cracked. A strange, black streak like oil stained the rudder, and the ship stank of something hungry…

  “Who is in charge of this water?” Lynne asked of the sailors who basked in the shade of the palms.

  “Lyra is our priestess,” one man replied lazily. He lounged, hands on his belly, but his eyes categorized her colors and memorized her face. “Our permits are in order. We’re a legal vessel.”

  Yes, and Lynne was the angel of emotional stability.

  Should I bother asking to see your crew manifest and entry visa? Regarding the vessel, the angel of oceans discarded that angle of attack. Smugglers did not reach middle age without learning proper forgery and bribery. Very well. What of the priestess?

  “Where is she?” she asked.

  Ah, how the temptations lingered. So easy to pull the half-broken ship into the harbor. Even easier to put the fear of God into this smug pirate.

  I pass through, she reminded herself like an alcoholic at a winery.

  The man took a long slurp from his canteen. “At lunch, I suppose. Usually frequents the café with the purple banner up-shell.”

  Lynne suppressed the quiet, impulsive urge to convert the contents of his canteen to donkey piss. Instead, she spun and hiked along the gentle slope for a café with a purple banner.

  So many stores now! She had to ask directions in her own city!

  The café was among the most luxurious shops. Its carved stone façade pretended to rustic, but the wide windows were clean glass. Atop the flat roof, a metal contraption wheezed at work, tethered to the grid by buzzing power lines. By electric power and metal ingenuity, the restaurant enjoyed unparalleled luxury: air conditioning.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Lingering patrons chewed on crushed ice inside, and the proprietor cleaned cups behind his marble bar.

  She paused in the entryway, savoring the chill wind.

  Progress ever onwards. Ah, but the inviting cool makes the heat that much worse, does it not? Is it weakness that they seek?

  Mirielle’s program would see humanity swaddled in comforts like crushed ice and air conditioning. The people of the sea were no less vulnerable to the allure of ease than the northerners. When air conditioning spread to every household, would men fear to meet the brunt of the sun?

  “Hail, good priestess,” the owner offered. “You’ve just missed lunch, but I can have the girls warm you some leftovers if you hunger.”

  “I seek Lyra,” she responded.

  “Afraid you just missed her. Her ward has eloped.”

  “Oh?”

  The proprietor wagged a finger. “The young ward sought her dinner at one table and her fun at another. She was set to marry a steadfast boy, but her dark horse has stolen her away.”

  “Just today?” How much easier this would be for Sebastian. He would turn his prying eyes on the city and know every name to be named. “Which way did the drama go then, and what did her dark horse look like? Like this?”

  Lynne quickly described Donovan as related by Sebastian for the proprietor.

  “I wouldn’t know the man by face, but Lyra’s ward described a man rather closer to her own age. Last I heard, Lyra headed for the monument, up-shell along the boulevard.”

  Lynne drummed her fingers on the table. “One final question. How much was the electricity?”

  “One and a half gold for installation. Five silver a month operating. Forgive me, priestess, but I’m quite busy,” he excused, polishing another glass.

  Despite the clear dismissal, Lynne smiled. Time was they would bow to the floor before the chosen of the Goddess. He treats me more like a nosy cop.

  Perhaps the city outgrew her after all. If Aure could escape into mere religion, why couldn’t she do the same?

  She walked up-shell, listening to the crowds chatter back to their business. They spoke of money, weather, and rumors like any other people. They maintained distance from Lynne out of respect for a senior priestess rather than holy fear.

  Alice would be proud. The great, terrible Stormmother could walk amongst her children unseen.

  The crowd slowed at the intersection, voicing fading into the whispers of dark news.

  “A ghost ship…”

  “A monster…”

  “They saw her…”

  Lynne swallowed. Be calm. All mortals mutter such gossip.

  “A sign.”

  “Her fury.”

  Their skies will never be darkened again.

  “I’ve heard the priestesses steal most the tithes for themselves these days…”

  “Lumian ships aren’t paying the Azure tithe!”

  “Those fools will damn us all!”

  The bright, tropical day grew darker. The people bowed their heads and slowed their steps, approaching the intersection ahead with whispered prayers and furtive wards against evil.

  So they whisper! So they fear! Was I to let the Cecille Gothic sink?!

  Following the whispering masses, Lynne finally saw her monument.

  Generations ago, she had claimed five great blocks of obsidian from the Lord of Peaks. At the time, she had intended to create monuments to her great victories for display before her temple. Years passed, though, and she let the thought slip away.

  She had stumbled upon the blocks a hundred and sixty years ago, remembered, and ordered her priestesses, “Make something of these to honor me.”

  They had obeyed after a fashion.

  Nestled on the island at the center of the intersection, the monument towered above the street lights. The blocks of obsidian had been stacked and chipped into a fisherman’s vessel at war with twisting, roaring waves. Its prow jutted almost vertical, ready to crest the one wave and doomed with the next. On deck, the carven men clung to their ropes in futility, their beards ragged and cheeks sunken. They grasped for each other, fingers stretched but never meeting, as their boat soared for the brief, futile moment before the maw of the void.

  Lynne forgot the whispers of mortals. Donovan and her mission fled her mind.

  Is this what they remember?

  Were these not supposed to be trophies? Triumphs?

  Is this what I am?

  The obsidian caption brandished his sword from the prow, but what use was steel against the waters?

  The brave cabin boy knelt in fevered prayer, unaware that he already began to slip.

  “This was our victory,” she whispered, winding through the crowd. “The Lord of Peaks had retreated to his Plateau, no longer courageous enough to war. We would know peace…”

  She had not known at the time that he was gone, surrendered to the Chorus, but she had been confident that all the world would soon belong to the last demon standing.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Lynne caressed the monument with a trembling finger.

Tempest deep, storm above, spare our sons.

Tempest deep, hunger below, spare our sons.

We honor you through tithe and prayer.

Spare our sons.

  Lynne laughed bitterly. As if a few murmured prayers could stem the tide.

  “Is this what will remain?” she asked the stones. “My shadow ascendant?”

  Of course mortals would remember the darkness. How else could they fill their mythology? What stories could they pass to their children but that their Goddess was the incarnation of the black seas?

  The angel of oceans firmed her lip. “No.”

  Her debts lingered; she would pay them.

  Lynne – no, the Tempest – had laughed while the passengers aboard the Cecille Gothic screamed. What did that fury care for consequences? It was the Tempest that brought the mortals quaking to their knees. The Tempest who was the enemy lurking in her shadow.

  She brought the shadow of the Tempest home. Could she now leave them with nothing but this anxious prayer?

  Have I learned nothing in exile?

  Lynne could show them what an angel could be. It would be a delay in her chase, but Donovan was only a man. He could only run so far.

  She spun on a heel and struck for the heart of Wave’s Lament. For home.

  Mortals could rearrange the streets, but her temple would always sing her name.

  A fence of shattered bones surrounded her compound, bleached pale by hundreds of years in the sun. Supplicants waited for entry in a line wrapped around the block and swiftly growing longer still. They wore their highest colors and prayed, cradling hope in their hearts.

  Those nearest to the gate – arrived before the ship – were lame, wizened, or choleric, and they pled for miraculous healings. They carried offerings, meager or great, muttered the old prayers, and quietly expected nothing for their efforts. What else remained for those abandoned by every doctor but begging an empty throne?

  Further back, the line swelled with healthy folk, praying in unison for a more concrete result: the continued survival of their city.

  Let the Maiden hear, they prayed – softly, lest the other hear.

  Clenching her fists, Lynne stomped through the gates, ignoring the young acolyte tasked with the census and three sweating guards.

  Her enchantments retained their power despite the decades, and the temple square was cool as a pleasant evening even in the light of day. Endless water fountains sprayed a refreshing mist, and streamers of cerulean silk fluttered high into the sky. A path of precious gems and sea shells led in a ritual spiral from the gate to the sandstone pyramid where the Goddess held her court in ages past.

  Once a minute, a chime sounded, and those walking the spiral knelt to pray.

  Goddess, my son takes ill. He coughs all the night long!

  Goddess, I cannot work. My back spasms so I can barely breathe!

  Goddess…

  Goddess…

  Goddess…

  An endless litany of need and hope, and beneath each prayer lurked a common strand:

  Let it be the Maiden who answers.

  The Maiden, and not the other.

  Lynne snarled, and the mists stuttered. “Make way!” she ordered, cutting across the spiral.

  She entered her complex through grand azure gates. Inside, the wide, dim hall glimmered by crystal bulbs in a pleasing, ever-shifting array of hues, and hymns echoed from distant halls. The priestesses tended to pilgrims in the eaves, offering medical care or solace.

  This was a place where people spoke in hushed whispers and time held no sway.

  Indeed, as she stepped inside, Lynne felt her exile evaporate. The same tapestries, the same colors, the same procession of priestesses…

  Leave them a sign and be done with this, she scolded herself. Just enough to banish the Tempest. A touch of spectacle!

  She brushed past the senior priestesses without a glance. Their serpents shivered at her passage and bolted for the nearest dark corner, but the priestesses remained ignorant.

  “Who was that?”

  “She wears our colors.”

  “A high priestess? I’ve never seen her in my life!”

  “A pretender in Wave’s Lament? Is she trying to commit suicide?”

  “Oh, icy hells, she’s headed for the sanctum!”

  They whistled to their serpents, but the elemental beasts of water refused to budge.

  The angel of oceans flicked a finger, activating the water gears that sealed the towering doors to her sanctum. They parted, rumbling across the floor like an earthquake, and revealed her demesne.

  A darkened hall; glowing waves; murals of conquest and beauty across sandstone walls. A throne for an imperial Goddess, its ceiling low and air still. Ice-cold water spilled from the back wall and raced in channels for the moon pool just beyond the grand doors. Each channel crested a small waterfall, spilled over a lip of stone, and ran into the pool, but its surface remained smooth and calm as glass.

  Her throne itself was a block of rough-cut sapphire fifteen feet tall, only vaguely shaped to accommodate the human figure. At its foot, a sea serpent grown as thick as a main mast slumbered, his ancient head tucked into his coils.

  Four pilgrims endured the waterfalls, kneeling on the lip of the pool, but Lynne’s gaze floated to a foreign addition to her hall.

  Someone had built a statue in her honor that now straddled the channels of water. Jungle wood, a woman with two faces: the gentle, beautiful youth of the West offered a libation; the drawn, scowling East cast down judgement from an outstretched hand.

  Maiden and Tempest, fused.

  Love and rage, inseparable.

  “Who erected this insult in my sanctum?” Lynne asked deliberately.

  The pilgrims rose from their places, dripping wet and stealing unsure glances between themselves.

  Near the temple entrance, a frantic woman shouted, “Someone stop that fraud!”

  “Oh, why do I bother?” Lynne asked, and her voice rumbled with thunder. “Like any of you would know.”

  She summoned her waters from the pool, and the calm moon pool erupted into tendrils of boiling steam. The tendrils grasped the statue by its neck and dragged it into the frothing water. The statue sank straight to the bottom, and then it sank further still, fading into greater depths entirely.

  The hymn silenced.

  The priestess in the hallway staggered to a stop.

  Three of the pilgrims, quite sensibly, scrambled to their feet and fled for their lives.

  The fourth rose, frowned, and looked to the throne. To the ancient sea serpent who continued to snore.

  This woman turned to the interloper, blinked, and saw as so few mortals ever did.

  “Lynne…?” whispered Belle in awe.

  The angel of oceans whirled on the peasant woman, her spear in her grasp without conscious thought.

  Belle stared at that icy black tip in morbid fascination. “Aure above forgive me…”

  “Forgive you what?” sneered Lynne the Tempest. “Your wasted gold? Oh, you must have thought yourself blessed! The line so short!”

  Only a foreigner would think the Tempest’s throne a place to pray for anything but mercy.

  Belle’s knees wobbled, and her eyes filled with tears. Sobbing, she collapsed at the angel’s feet.

  “Aure above,” the peasant hiccupped, “even this fails! Even coming this far…forgive me!”

  She began to weep, tears spilling onto Lynne’s toes. Each droplet drove Belle’s despair into Lynne’s blood, and the   angel beneath the Tempest remembered.

  How they grovel.

  How they fear.

  As they should.

  The angel recoiled, her spear melting into mist, and she fought down that black voice.

  Oh, Belle, don’t pray forgiveness from me! Do you understand the things I have done?!

  Hesitantly, she knelt before the quavering woman, and she tried to summon the words a better woman would have used. “Do not cry. You need not ask forgiveness of that bloated church. I do not answer to Aure.”

  Belle shook like a leaf, and her tears whispered of a hope dashed on the rocks over and over again. “Then why do you come here?!”

  Wisdom was a whisper from the unexpected quarter. A simple question from a grieving woman that stabbed Lynne through the breast.

  In ancient times…

  In times before grand temples and earthshattering wars.

  In ancient times, they came to me to heal.

  Before she Bloomed, she welcomed the sick into her tent. She boiled salves for injured sailors, helped ease birth, and set broken bones. She understood so little of the body, but still she applied prayers and ointments to every fool who sought her home.

  Sailors had come to her and asked that she throw the bones to predict the moods of wind and wave.

  She had relied on those bones herself.

  Inevitably, she predicted wrong. A day that should have been calm and perfect was not, and the storms finally caught her.

  She and all those she cherished, consigned to the hungry crabs, another wreck among the graveyard.

  Yearning and anguish had met in the darkness of a final breath…

Let not a single sailor’s widow weep.

May there be no more offerings on the beach for the dead.

  Oh, Lynne had wished such good for the world.

  Yet her womb was the storm, and she carried it in her blood.

  No one had warned her how fast good could slip between her fingers in those early days. By the time someone dared to speak, her comrades had become her most hated enemies.

  I wanted my legacy to be a garden for you all. That was why I remained here.

  Lynne offered her hands to Belle. She pulled the woman to her feet, and she asked, “How do you hurt, my child?”

  And so, I still remain. Here to bear the penance for my Tempest.

  Drawn in by azure eyes, Belle spoke the shameful truth. “I am barren,” she admitted.

  Lynne raised her fingertips, and her nails glistened with a dew like starlight. “Then heed the first lesson. Water is life.”

  The angel gently slid her hand into Belle’s belly through flesh and spirit.

  Ah, a simple problem. The woman’s blood could not distinguish between a fetus and a disease. Her waters were clouded and aggrieved, attacking anything in sight.

  Lynne corrected the flow with tiny, careful adjustments. A hormone here, a hormone there. The woman’s body would know the way. It only needed to be shown a guiding light.

  “Be at ease,” the angel whispered. “You will have a child.”

  The words rang heavy with a fate beyond Lynne’s intention. A presence curious and pure sang against Lynne’s fingertips, and the angel withdrew in surprise.

  That is something quick, clever, and full of trouble.

  Withdrawing her hand, she pressed her palm to Belle’s cheek. “It seems your child is eager to meet you. Choose your next lover well, my dear. I don’t think this one wants to wait.”

  Belle gasped softly, fingers fluttering to her belly button. “Thank you. Thank you…”

  Lynne the Maiden rose, cloaked in her mists and resplendent in her mien.

  Of course, her priesthood gawked from beyond the doors. As she turned to regard them, they sank to the floor to pray.

  “We begin,” the Maiden said.

  A tap of her heels, and all the waters of the city shone with her light.

  “We have so much to do.”

  Let Gabriel pass judgement as he will. I cannot abandon them. They forget the blessings so quickly, but the darkness lingers so long…

  Lynne would simply have to remind her children of the Maiden – over and over – until only the blessings remained.

  One of the priestesses was lame. She had danced with abandon, and twenty years later the bill came due.

  The Maiden reknit the woman’s knee like mending a torn shirt.

  Another of the women suffered from migraines.

  Those the Maiden banished like clouds at dawn.

  Only the first of many.

  The Stormmother carried her faithful like a comet’s tail as she swept to the temple hospital. There waited so many in need of blessings.

  First was a man who had lost his wits in a blow to the head. He wandered now in a world of fog, never free of that moment of impact.

  The Maiden brought him back to daylight with a gentle touch.

  As she knit his brains together, the trumpets declared her return.

  The Maiden pulled rot from an old man’s jaw and brought sight to a baby’s eyes.

  Wave’s Lament regarded the first peals with skepticism, but the temple put every priestess with a pulse to the streets to shout at the top of their lungs.

  “The Maiden comes! The Maiden blesses!”

  Baffled, incredulous, her people woke to the being in their midst.

  My attention is required. So much has languished in my absence…

  Methodically, she worked her way in concentric circles from her temple. When she felt sickness beneath the earth, she knelt and leeched the poison from old pipes. She summoned the plumbers to remind them of the dangers in lead, and the swelling crowd hurled the men forward for judgement.

  The men tore at their clothes in anguish, and their foreman offered to kill himself.

  It was not an idle offer. If his blood would sate the Tempest…

  The angel stretched her hand…

  He flinched, head bowed…

  How they still fear my shadow…

  She laid her hand on his bald head. “If I wished for your blood, good yeoman, I would have it. Live instead.”

  I will show them better.

  The radios blared her good news, and the jubilee swelled in her wake. Rapturous witnesses shouted her name from windows, and men wept at the sight of her figure. The faithful rushed to line her path with crushed flowers so that the goddess would need not step on dirt.

  For this was their Maiden, here to bring solace to the weary.

  Straighten the children born twisted. Clear the madness of senility from the aged.

  One hundred thirteen thousand, four hundred and sixty ones living souls called this city home, and they needed so much more than she could offer.

  Her soul groaned, a vessel overturned and pouring its dregs, but she found strength to give more.

  To be their Maiden.

  New fingers for careless sailors.

  She trailed healing rains that brought the spring flowers to bloom out of season.

  Knit the flesh of rotted lepers.

  She stood twelve feet tall, and her face was that of every man’s own mother.

  Pour courage into the hearts of cowardly men.

  The day fell to night, unheeded, and all of Wave’s Lament rejoiced.

  Draw the parasites from a man’s belly.

  She worked for rich and for poor, faithful and heretic, from the heights of the shell to the fetid harbor.

  Dawn came. Was this the first or the second? She reached the last pier, and her acolytes waited, azure paint on their bellies and serpents draped over their shoulders.

  They bowed to the Goddess, and they danced the Dragon.

  This is what I wanted, thought the angel, watching woman and serpent twirl, at the beginning of it all.

  “This is right,” Lynne instructed. “Dancer and serpent, bound unto death. A love earned, never forced.”

  Her scribes transcribed her words with rapt attention. Hard to write properly while weeping, but the voice of the Maiden shook their souls like birds in a cage.

  “We wanted this…”

  Her children did not understand, of course. How could they after so many years?

  A discordant note soured the jubilee.

  She turned to find a young woman approaching, cradling a tiny corpse.

  “Let her through,” Lynne commanded.

  The crowd parted like the sea, and the trembling woman offered forth her stillborn babe.

  Lynne knelt, accepting the tiny body.

  All fell silent, awaiting the miracle.

  Oh, dear child. Even at my greatest, I could not defy the Black Gate.

  “You do not understand what you ask,” Lynne counseled softly.

  A privilege reserved for God alone, and the Maiden knew herself to be a candle before the sun.

  “But you can heal her,” the woman dared in her grief.

  “Only the body. A shell empty of promise,” the Maiden whispered. She reached forward to remove the woman’s grief – to ease her way.

  It will be better this way. You won’t even remember you mourned.

  For just an instant, she saw a butterfly balanced on the tip of her finger.

  What would you do to remember the names of those you lost in mortal days, woman? Would you surrender those names just to spare yourself?

  Did the butterfly speak, or was it Lynne’s own heart?

  The angel withdrew her hand.

  This woman must remember that she can mourn.

  “Death must be, my child. Death must be.”

  The scribes would write entire treatises on that single insight, and they would fawn over her sagacity.

  As though Lynne invented wisdom. She was but a thief, parroting greater words.

  The Maiden dug the grave for the baby in a copse of trees along the shore with her own hands.

  A hundred thousand people held the silence when she finally patted the dirt for the last time.

  Life, restored.

  Death, honored.

  Wave’s Lament whole once more. No more lepers, no more blind beggars, no more rheumatic grandfathers. Oh, there would be more by tomorrow – starting with the inevitable results of a drunken revelry in full swing.

  But for one crystal moment, the Maiden’s work was done.

  She watched her children dance the Dragon in silence, and her city cheered. Wine flowed from every decanter, and the constables absolved the sentences of criminals in joy. Joy…and perhaps a touch of fear.

  Beneath the jubilee, something still lurked. The people of Wave’s Lament celebrated all the harder in denial.

  Today, the Maiden. Tomorrow, perhaps, the Tempest.

  All that love and fear upon her shoulders.

  The angel of oceans shivered.

  How they need me...always and forever.

  She would be their Goddess. She would pay her debts…

  Always and forever, right here…

  But perhaps she could deal with Donovan first. Was that not a debt to the Archangel? One final quest before she resigned herself…

  Lynne licked her lips. “I have one final commandment for this day.”

  Her priestesses stilled expectantly.

  “Dissolve the ranking of colors. Any citizen may wear any color. Let the streets bloom like flowers in the spring.”

  One of the older priestesses, well accustomed to her status, squirmed. “But how will we be known for your chosen without your colors?”

  “You will simply have to act the part for once,” the angel of oceans replied dryly.

  With that, their goddess dissolved into a swirling, rainbow mist and bled into the river.

  Lynne, on the other hand, sidestepped through the cold barrier into the astral realms. In the process, she scared the tails off a handful of curious imps; several fled back to material reality in shock.

  In the old days, men would have recognized that as a sign of active in the unseen realm, but man remembered little of the old days.

  “I will return shortly,” Lynne said, a promise as much to herself as the city. “We will endure this.”

  After a century and a half, her people still needed their Maiden, and she did not know what path would wean them of that addiction.

  So she might well remain the Stormmother. Forever.

  But if that is what is good… She clenched her fists. Then so mote it be.