The old woman regards me from across the oily wooden surface, considering. Her skin matches the table in a way, etched with wrinkles and decorated with tattoos much the same as the wood is cracked and carved with glyphs and sigils. Graffiti left by patrons past. Warm light flickers across her face, glows in her crimson eyes—cast by the driftwood fire crackling in the black and white stone hearth. The waiter returns with more drinks. My second, E.J's third, and Hama Oyabi's fifth.
"So what say you, Hama?" presses E.J. as I take a sip of my wild berry and gin cocktail.
A tenured professor, she's also High Hama of the Avdayar—a sort of priestess. An esteemed member of the same closed culture as Rhoric's estranged father, those with legends of the Aravatra. Legends she seems none too keen to share.
She grunts. "I'll let her draw the stones. Beyond that, I promise you nothing." She downs the liquor with her second drink of it, slamming her mug down on the table before sweeping it aside and dropping a small stitched-together leather sack in its place.
With a gnobbly hand bedecked in rings of bone and garnet, she shoves it across the table to me.
"Draw your first stone," she orders. "Head stone. Don't be picky, draw the first you touch."
Shuddering a bit, I do as I'm bid—reaching into the soft darkness of the bag and feeling down until my fingers touch something cool and smooth. But just beneath the surface of it thrums the dark spark of energy that life leaves behind. When I withdraw the object, the light reveals it to be a small ammonite fossil, partially opalized. The colors in its crystalline bands dance in the firelight, mesmerizing. The Hama's eyes widen for a fraction of a heartbeat. She grunts again.
"Draw again. Heart stone."
Again, I reach in—this time pulling out a blueish moonstone. Her lip twists a bit as she considers this.
"Now hand stones. Draw one with your left, one with your right."
I feel something interesting this time beneath the fingers of my left hand, but different than the ammonite. Something that seems to draw energy, rather than radiating it. It turns out to be uncharged Umbra crystal, like the kind from the caverns back at UNI.
At the sight of this, something sparks in Hama Oyabi's red eyes, and she sits up a little straighter as I pull the right hand stone.
I don't recognize it. It's ink-black and porous, with flecks of something gray and metallic scattered throughout.
"Now, your ground stone. The last one." says the Hama, gaze fixed on mine, uncomfortably intense. I look away from her as I make my final selection—which turns out to be a small chunk of polished silver. As I place it on the table before me, her wrinkled hand bolts out to catch hold of mine. There's a tingling, numbing sensation in my flesh and my head swims.
"Stop that," snaps E.J.
Hama Oyabi releases me, grinning. Suddenly her blood-red eyes seem brighter, her bent back straighter. Even her gray hair's taken on a healthier sheen.
"You ask me to give of myself, my people," she says, eyes fixed on me—though I know her words are for both of us. "Do not be so arrogant as to think you can take without giving."
"So...you are going to tell us about the Aravatra?" I hedge, hope creeping into my question.
She cackles. "Of course not. We don't sing the songs to outsiders. Ever. Not for anything. But there is a place here, a place that belongs to us. The whole archipelago did, once—but that is another song entirely," she shakes her head. "We sometimes allow others to go to that place, if the stones read right. And you may go."
"When?" I try to keep the trepidation out of my voice. For some reason, I can't stop myself from thinking of dank, close caves full of glittery eyes and creeping creatures.
"As soon as we're done here, of course!" She declares hoarsely, lifting her mug to motion for another drink.
I throw a worried, questioning look over at E.J, but she just flashes me an encouraging smile and a thumbs-up. Then Hama Oyabi turns back to us and the veneer of respectability settles back over her.
"Maybe we could also, um, get some food, too?" I venture. For some reason, the Hama bursts into more laughter at that. Frowning, E.J. sends Somi zipping off to request a menu.
~*~
Of course it's a spirits-cursed cave. Of course.
But I pray silently to whatever spirits will listen that there aren't any actual curses lingering here. It seems like the sort of place, with the tall trees and mossy cliff faces to either side of us, blocking out the light of stars, moon and village. I'm grateful for my Reaper's vision, but even to me, it feels unusually dark here. I'm too used to the light. Or maybe I'm imagining it. Maybe it's just the ominous feeling I've had ever since Hama Oyabi first snatched my hand. Somewhere in the unseen distance, I hear the splashing of a waterfall, the flow of a river.
The opening of the cave is small and darker still, little more than a moss-padded hole in the ground. I hesitate at the opening, legs dangling into the unknown. Down there, with no source of light whatsoever, even I will be close to blind.
"You're sure Boon can't come with me?" I implore, peering over my shoulder at Hama. "I don't have any other source of light."
"Did I read the stones for your servitor? No. For your lover? No. Only for you. Only you go."
I can feel that E.J's about to say something, to reassure me, caution me...but knowing it'll just get harder with each moment that passes, I slip down into the inky blackness and leave her behind. Mossy stones form a sort of uneven stair not far below my feet, making the descent less jarring than I'd expected.
It takes my eyes a moment to adjust, but when they do, I'm surprised to find that it's not entirely lightless down here. If I were still human, it no doubt might as well be. But I pick up the faintest possible glow off to my right, at the far end of the small, uneven cavern I find myself in. I follow it into a narrow, hall-like tunnel…fighting the urge to bolt straight back the way I'd come.
But the light grows the further I go, until the tunnel expands abruptly into a large, open, pit of a cave. Overhead, I catch glimpses of stars—but they're partly blocked out by the tangles of dark violet bramble that drape across the maw-like opening. Graveweed. Beams of starlight break through to dot the moss ringing the outer edges of the pit, the still pool at its center.
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I'm not sure where to look first—at the things in the water, or the faintly glowing etchings along the stone walls. I settle on the water. The deadly vines have claimed many lives over the years. Most of them are birds, the freshest of which is a crow, eye milky as it gazes up, half submerged at the edge of the pool. A few are larger, like the skeleton of the deer at the pool's other end, bones and antlers clean and pearly white in the starshine.
Turning from the pool and its corpses, I walk along the outer wall, searching for where the images begin. If there even is a beginning. I start to the left of the tunnel opening that brought me here, hand trailing along the stone. The images are simple, stylized, but beautiful. The glowing stuff within is alive, a lichen of some sort.
But for as lovely as they are, the story the images tell chills me. It starts with a lightning strike—a person with a bolt like a great branching tree joining them to the clouds etched above. And then, a passage. They cross through a Gate. Skeletons dance around them as they journey forward—a Reaper. Then it shows the figure standing before another who kneels on the ground. Shackled. At first, I think they're wearing armor. Then I look a little closer and realize it's likely meant to be a Petran.
That's when I come to another tunnel opening. At its other side, the Petran is gone. The Stormstruck Reaper carries on alone—until they come upon a Shifter with the head of a wolf, also shackled, after which the story is interrupted by another yawning hole of darkness.
And on it goes, until they've encountered four others in total. After each, the darkness of a tunnel. And after each, they move on alone—but the aura of power etched about their figure grows.
I'm about three-quarters of the way around the cavern when there's an immense swell of Umbral power, accompanied by the beating of wings, the gentle breaking of water. I whip around on the spot, putting my back to the wall as my body contorts instinctively into a more defensive position. My power reaches across a web of glimmering darkness, and in the pool, dead things begin to stir.
But then I see the the thing that's joined me here, and I freeze. The corpses go still, grave-water rippling around them.
It's a horned heron—the single, luminous protrusion jutting from the center of its brow like a twist of molded starlight. It cocks its head, fixing one ice-blue eye on my face, meeting my gaze with an intelligence that sends a shiver bolting down my spine.
It spreads its wings, holding them wide for a moment. Then it beats at the air with them, lifting one leg. Its power flares, not in crackles or bolts, but in a brilliant, thrumming violet glow. I look to my hands, panic rising—but they're unchanged.
Static trance.
Then it cries out, its mournful voice echoing in my skull, my mind.
That's when I turn and run back the way I came.
At first, I don't know why I run. But as we make our way to the hotel, the adrenaline drains away and I begin to come back to myself. The reason for my flight finally returns to me.
It's because I'd wanted to do exactly the opposite, in that moment. I'd wanted to throw myself at the feet of that creature, offer myself up to it, more than anything I've ever wanted before. Even stronger than the draw I felt to the dragon-stag.
And that feeling terrified me.
~*~
I'm back at UNI, but everything is wrong. The night is pitch black, save the tiny fires Lore is setting throughout the forest and all around the Lodge. Beatrice follows her with blank, empty eyes, a slight smile on her face. Pale white mushrooms grow from her skin and fall away, taking chunks of her with them. The spirit shells call to me with Leon's voice.
"Ash, where are you? It's so dark here. Ash...Ash, please. Help me!"
But it's like my eyes have stopped working properly. All I can see now are the little fires, but they cast no light on what's around them. My feet fumble beneath me as I try to get closer to the spirit shells, to Leon, and every step I do manage takes me in the wrong direction. And always, just behind me, I feel my mother. Unseen, but there. Always there.
"You have to drain them," she whispers, over and over again. "You have to drain them all."
When I come to, I'm crying in frustration and fear. Sick to my stomach, brow slick with sweat. Thankfully, E.J's a deep sleeper once she really gets into it, and I don't wake her. She growl-grunts a bit, perhaps dreaming, and turns onto her other side—but her eyes stay shut. Rogue, rose-colored sunlight is creeping up over the world's edge and through the window, catching on the metallic coils of the storm-restraints on our bedside table.
We can't have gotten more than a few hours of sleep. After we'd gotten back to the suite, we'd spent a long time in discussion over my experience. And now that I've had a few hours to rest, I'm embarrassed by how much of that time I wasted blubbering about what a coward I was, bolting out of there without even seeing all the etchings. We're going to try to convince Hama Oyabi to let me back in, but I think we both know she won't.
Going without her permission, which E.J. hinted at considering, is out of the question, as far as I'm concerned.
Careful not to wake my sleeping hybrid, I pad out of the room and into the common area of the suite and from there, out onto the balcony. My Lady Royale awaits, and I take it up with a sigh as I sink into one of the plush, weather-resistant chairs. A long ways off, a heron calls. A shudder sends the little hairs on the back of my neck on-end. The door slides open, and E.J. steps out wearing a long black dressing robe over her pants from the previous day.
So much for not disturbing her.
Scooping me up, she takes my place in the chair. I curl easily into her lap, her arms cradling me to either side. We both look out at the world as it begins to wake, let the birdsong drown out our thoughts. After what feels like a long time, she finally changes position, enough to look directly into my eyes.
"Want some coffee?"
~*~
As it turns out, Mittens destroyed a little over half the clothes I packed, though I doubt I would have needed them all anyway. But E.J. forces her credit sigil on Boon regardless, insisting I replace it all.
"Why are you taking responsibility for my pet's destructiveness?" I wonder, as Boon chirps in traitorous ascent to her directive of making sure I do as I'm told.
"Because I'm the one who was soft enough to let you bring it," she says between sips of hotel coffee.
"It's her," I grumble under my breath, kneeling before my trunk as I sift for something intact enough to wear. After breakfasting together in the hotel restaurant, E.J. heads out for her lectures and I wander into the village to shop and explore. But although I appreciate the beauty of the island, I'm only half-aware of it. Churning constantly across the backdrop of my mind are thoughts of the cavern pit, the etchings, the heron. The nightmare.
The conclusion we'd come to, in the late hours of the night, was that the etchings meant a Stormstruck Reaper had to drink from one of each other type of Umbran to become the Aravatra. Perhaps drain them completely. But does that mean that my Shifter and Crimson abilities will fade, if I stop consuming E.J's blood? Now that I think of it, I have been feeling more like myself since I stopped eating the strawberries. But will the drop I tasted yesterday have any affect? It doesn't seem to have. And what does all this have to do with the dragon-stag? And that horned heron...
"Ash," Boon cuts into my tangled thicket of thoughts. "I'm supposed to make sure you buy some clothes. You haven't gone into a single shop."
"Oh, right." I come to a stop, blinking around as if waking up from a dream. A sign across the street catches my eye—what looks like actual gold and gemstone inlaid in dark, lacquered wood to read Jack Rabbit / Opal in a combination of organic and hard-edged fonts. The window display beneath is a fascinating array of rugged, natural pieces like sheep skin cloaks and knotty woolen sweaters, accented by hints of luxury. A crow skull carved of blue-green, pink-flecked gemstone hung on a leather cord. A belt like the spine of a snake, but wrought in fine silver.
As I join a small crowd of others at the crosswalk, I feel the weight of their attention for the first time. So many Umbrans in one place. Umbrans that might not be used to having a Stormstruck strolling around with them. The red eyes linger the longest, hungry and wide. I pick up my pace, hoping Mittens stays asleep in my bag as I step into the shop's fur-and-sweetwood scented interior. As the door swings open, there's a sound like the shaking of a rattlesnake's tail.
The blue-haired Petran woman behind the counter looks up to greet me before burying her face once more in her book. I breathe a sigh of relief. Nothing worse than a pushy sales person in a place like this.
But then I almost walk out after my first glance at a price tag. Boon talks me down.
"Just don't look at the tags," he suggests.
As the bookworm rings me up some two or so hours later—handing me the crystal-crow pendant I've decided to wear out and wrapping everything else up—I feel an odd prickle of unease and glance out the window. Scan the passing shoppers. Breathe a sigh of relief that all seems normal. But then my eye catches on one person who isn't passing. One person who's standing still on the other side of the street.
Staring straight at me.