13
THE SISTERS' FOOTSTOOL
🙜
It was nearly midnight when Ember glimpsed the first light floating in the woods. Soft and bright and amber-hued, like a distant lantern but too perfectly round and too high in the branches. He turned his head to stare, spear at the ready, but it winked out before he could pinpoint its exact distance.
On any ordinary night he might have dismissed it as his own fool imagination. But tonight, in this place, under the shadow of the Sisters, he knew better.
“Ky,” he whispered. “Did you see that?”
“The air is twisted,” murmured the sirena, her gaze flickering from tree to crooked tree as they walked.
Ember clenched the spear. “Twisted?”
She stopped and pointed to another light deep in the woods, this one a pale green. It disappeared as if she had snuffed it with her finger. “These hills are close to the mountain. Do not be bothered by the magic, but do not pay heed to such things, or it will surely lead you astray.”
He wondered at her reference to the magic as a single entity and could not work out whether it was intentional or merely one of her strange habits of speech, but before he could speak, Ky grasped his wrist in her thin clammy fingers and drew him closer. He shifted the basket to a more comfortable position on his arm and allowed her to lead him as one might lead a wayward packmule. A heavy, musty odor had settled over the forest; it made him drowsy.
“How did you find out?” he asked. “Have you ever followed one of those lights?”
Instead of answering directly, she simply stated, her voice soft, “Fear not; these woods shall never beguile me.”
Now that he knew what to look for, he glimpsed many such lights as they walked, first individually and then in groups of two or three. They might as well have been shifting moonbeams flickering through the branches, yet Ember felt a profound sense of relief—and a strange, aching disappointment—each time they disappeared.
“Sunlight will drive them away at dawn,” Ky finally said, taking note of his discomfort, “and I do not believe we shall see them again once we reach higher ground. We will rest here until sunrise.”
Shuddering, Ember dropped to the ground under the nearest tree, tossing aside his basket and spreading out the blanket on the bare earth.
“I don’t like this magic,” he muttered vehemently.
“Nor does it like you,” Ky declared.
He glanced up at her, patting the ground in an attempt to flatten out his makeshift bed. “What?”
Ky sat down a few paces away and rested her elbows on her gangly knees, looking rather froggish. In the darkness her black eyes resembled empty pits, gleaming only when she turned her head slightly and a bit of starlight reflected in them.
“There are many whispers in this place,” she crooned, “and few are kindly. These spells are ancient and the magic has cruel intent. I do not understand it, nor does it understand us, but one thing I do know: it has a purpose, long ago.”
“What purpose was that?”
She indulged in what Ember considered to be a rather smug smile. “I have seen the door in the mountain and I cannot be fooled, but the trees do not like us and paths are ever-shifting. They wish us to stay far away.”
Ghost paths, he thought.
“You can tell the trees their regards are mutual,” admitted Ember, scratching his head. They were in a relatively low-lying area, almost a hollow, and the phantom forest rose up on either side as if lying in wait to swallow them up in their sleep. “I don’t much like it here myself…”
“We go on,” Ky said, casually preening her hair. “Magic does not frighten me.”
He considered that; from anyone else, it would have sounded like madcap folly, but he actually believed the sirena. “It must not frighten Hunter either.”
“Who is this hunter you speak of?”
Ember lay back, folding his arms behind his head, and took a deep breath of fragrant night air. It was loamy and crisp and tempered, as always, by that peculiar siren musk. “Nobody in particular.”
“I wish to know more.”
“Hmmh,” murmured Ember, yawning wide. “He’s a storyteller and a wayfarer, and some people call him a thief. I don’t know if he’s that, but he’s certainly an opportunist. I always…”
He trailed off, remembering things—little, simple, personal things—that he had left in the past, and suddenly unsure of how much he wished to share.
“When I was younger I’d watch him set off for the coast after he’d worn out his welcome in town. He told the most interesting tales, and when I asked him—”
“Tales?” put in Ky quizzically.
“You know, stories and songs and suchlike. When I asked him where he heard them all, he simply said ‘the sea.’” After a brief pause for thought, he confessed, “I always hoped he’d take me with him someday.”
Ky fell very quiet and still, her hands tangled up in her hair. Then she continued her preening and remarked, “You say you are fond of your nest, once.”
He stared up at the misty branches overhead, watching distant lights twinkle through the leaves and needles, and smiled a little. “I still am. But I wanted to see the ocean.”
“Have you?”
“No.” Ember sighed, closing his eyes. “Have you?”
“Ember,” she whispered, her voice trailing across his skin like a living thing: “The ocean is my nest.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It is great and cold, and deep and wide, and blue like a darker sky. Beneath the water, where the sun yet warms the surface, fish with silver scales swim in glittering clouds; but there are many tastier fish to snatch in the darkest reaches. Your people call those reaches fathoms. Many far fathoms down, they are. The sea is beautiful and wise, and shelters us from the sun. You could never live there, Ember, for all the men who visit its hidden depths do so against their will, and they do not live long enough to appreciate its beauty.”
As she spoke, an image slowly took shape upon the canvas of his mind; at first a crude painting, it grew more detailed and alive with every word. Her voice rose and fell, tugging his heart with it.
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“There are large serpents and many-legged monsters with eyes like the stone from the mountain, and teeth that would surely tear you apart. The ocean tries to devour the shore, crashing upon the dust of the earth again and again, but cannot reach far before it is drawn back unto itself. It is…”
The ebb and flow of her words paused as she searched for the right one.
"…relentless. It sends more waves to shore, seeking to claim the land for its own. On stormy days and stormy nights the ocean pounds and pounds and pounds, but it can never attain its desire. It is forever in want of more, and forever it shall hope in vain."
The vision that splashed behind his eyelids slowly faded. Ember shivered, caught in the remnant imaginings of the sirena's tongue, and slowly opened his eyes.
Ky Veli was bathed in bluish glow from her head to her feet, and before her hovered an orb of light.
It throbbed like a beating heart.
She reached out to touch it with a finger but it danced just out of reach. And he knew—somehow—that this peculiar little creature was the color of the ocean: all the blues, greens, and varied hues of flashing sunlight on the waves were contained within its glowing form.
Ky bared her fangs.
It barely retreated.
And then it drifted closer, as if daring her to rebuke it.
She curled her tongue in a savage hiss and the light finally darted away, leaving them to the shadows. Ember let out the breath he'd been holding in a disappointed sigh.
"Why did you chase it away?" he murmured, frowning at her.
Ky absently picked at her teeth with a claw. "My tale was for you," she said, her eyes very dark. "Not for it."
He felt flattered, and a little sorry for the wandering light despite his initial dislike of them.
"Go to sleep," she advised.
So Ember reclined and closed his eyes again, facing the sirena with his back to the deeper woods. Ky did not make any attempt at furthering her narrative, but she did hum very quietly, and it was the last thing he heard before a parade of strange and wonderful dreams overtook him.
❧
He awoke in the dark and misty hours of the morning to a mournful whistle. It echoed beneath the mountain—almost a cry, almost a laugh, and if he had to liken it to something he understood he would have described it as a loon calling out across a wide lake. Low and long, it shivered something deep inside his soul.
Cold sweat broke out across the back of his neck. From the first clear note until the echoes rolled away down the mountain, his vision blurred, as if to better let his ears appreciate the sound.
When the whistle died away he noticed the siren sitting up rigidly, her ears fanned out and her chin very stiff. She glanced here and there in quick jerking motions, like a watchful bird.
Her humming had stopped.
"Ky," he whispered. "What was that?"
She glanced down at him sharply.
"Go to sleep," she said again.
"What was it?" he demanded.
"Go to sleep, Ember. All is well."
Though he felt that all was not well, he squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath of dusty leaves and sweet pitch. He could still hear the echo in his mind, long after it should have faded away.
❧
"Ember!" came the cheerful cry.
"Aaow," mumbled Ember, his voice muffled in his armpit. He'd rolled onto his stomach during the night and there was a lumpy root sticking him in the ribs. He yawned, his chin scraping across dirt. He must have kicked his blanket away.
"Ember," she said, her voice drifting closer. "Get up."
"I'm tired…"
"Get up, up, up," urged Ky, poking his arm. "The mountain is not far now!"
Ember sighed a very snuffly sigh into the dirt. He was under the impression that he'd been enjoying some exquisitely pleasant dreams, but he couldn't remember anything more than a hazy glimpse of a vast blue horizon. "I need more sleep."
"Ember," she wheedled.
Her coaxing did little more than to make him suddenly aware of how much he loved hearing her say his name, and he felt compelled beyond reason to make her say it again. Instead of sitting up, he curled into himself and hid his face.
She poked him a second time.
When that failed, he heard faint rustling behind him. "Get up, or I will eat everything in your basket."
"Eat it."
A short silence followed.
"Hmmm. Perhaps I will take the basket and leave you behind," she mused, scampering off with a little sniff.
"No, no, wait—" Ember snatched up his spear and stumbled to his feet, frantically scrubbing sleep from his eyes. He tripped once, and then practically flew up the trail. "Ky, wait! Don't do that—"
She was waiting patiently for him at the crest of a hill, munching on the last of the dried mushrooms.
"You are coming after all?"
She grinned.
Shaking his head, Ember trotted up the hill.
"I don't think I can find my way back alone," he said.
"That is easy," Ky chided. "Go downhill."
"Easy in theory." Ember glanced up at the mountain crags, a frown tightening his forehead. They looked dourly back at him, draped in mist and morning light; all was bathed in pale gold and dusky pinks, and now that a few birds were singing, their path no longer seemed so dangerous nor so forlorn. "Where do we go from here?"
"Uphill."
"Of course… silly me."
After a relatively short hike, they reached a place where Ky's elusive path began to level somewhat, and the trees grew leafier and were fewer. They were out of the thick woods known to most in town as the Sisters’ Footstool, and ascending into the heights.
More flowers bloomed along the cliffs—stray bluebells, patches of mountain heather, and entire fields of white nodding daisies, all alongside many strange and beautiful plants he did not recognize. Some of them appeared familiar at first glance, but upon closer inspection proved to be distant relatives rather than a flower he knew.
He found it ironic that the Sisters, so renowned for death and darkness, were sheltering a veritable garden at their feet.
Ky followed his roving gaze curiously, and when she returned from one of her waterfall trips she came bearing an armful of flowers—fresh, exotic ones the likes of which he had never laid eyes on. They were white on the outside with deep black throats, and spotted in blood-red.
She plopped them into his basket and then held one of them under his nose: it smelled both bitter and sweet, an enticing fragrance.
"Thank you," he said hesitantly, taking it from her fingertips as they continued their walk. "Are they magical?"
"In their own way."
After a few moments of thought, he turned again to the sirena—who was wringing water out of her hair and splashing it across her face—and asked, "How is it that you can be away from the river so long?"
She tossed him a coy glance. "What do your tales say?"
"Only that you live in the water. You said so yourself," he pointed out, wagging the flower at her.
"I need a little," she confessed, "to live. I will not like to be parted from the water more than a few hours' time. Fortunately your Sisters are very generous, and where there is no waterfall there will always be a pond or stream."
Ember bit his tongue for a few minutes, but in the end, he had to know: "What would happen if you never touched another drop of water, ever again?"
She looked up at the twin peaks and fell silent.
"Ky?"
"I would wither," she admitted, finally returning her attention to Ember and touching one of the petals of the flower. "As this will, soon."
"And die?"
"I never hear of such a thing among my people, but if any perish for lack of water, they do not live to make a song of it!" She surprised Ember with a short laugh. "We keep to the seas, to the lakes and the rivers. Death or no death, I will not be liking to live my life as a husk."
And he left it at that.