Gently, with all the weight of breath, the dead woman on the bier closed her fingers over my paw.
That was all—she did not open her eyes or sit up and ask for water. Four fingers just lifted and fell again, closing me in a grip which stone might envy.
The Wolf-Star leaned over us. “We always hope—it would be an answer, anyway. But they never wake up. I suppose after all this time it would be strange if they did.” Liulfr closed her eyes and began to wash me, to clean my wound in the wolfish way, with her long tongue, rough as marsh sand. With each stroke my body pulsed, vibrating under her like a plucked harp. I could see only her golden fur, shimmering candle-wise, though I could feel the Stone-Star’s fingers on my fur, cold and lifeless. She lapped up the light like milk, slurping at it, sucking it from the gash in the Manikarnika, carefully collecting every drop.
Finally, she closed her long, silky snout over my shaggy breast, gripping my chest in her jaws and pinning me to the diamond girl, teeth pressing my ragged skin.
I could feel it, rushing all through me like a burst wine barrel, the light and blood that poured out of her jaws, finding its circuit in me, doubled back brighter and harsher and more terrible than before, searching out a wave to ride into my bones and belly, great, rolling tides that filled me up like a water-horn. I was glutted with it, light from the Wolf’s mouth and the jewel’s body, the jewel’s body and mine, light old and unspeakable as the sky. I choked, moaned, even screamed emptily into the cavern as they pushed it through me—for this is work, granddaughter, the change of light; it is pushing a boulder up a mountain, or a mountain up a mountain. She opened and filled and sewed and opened me again. And how many hours I lay helpless and quivering between them I cannot say. They took the dim, whittled light I had in me and returned it to me, blazing like nothing I had ever known.
When finally I felt the Wolf’s jaw release me, I started as if out of a dream, every pore thrumming, open, shaking. I was a woman again, I could feel it: five fingers on each hand, teeth flat and thick, long hair grazing my waist like a paintbrush.
Liulfr touched my face with her wet nose. “What we have given you is yours, but it does not belong to you. We don’t mind it, we have never minded, but light is a thing with limits. You must understand that when a Star gives it she is diminished.” She shut her eyes against my cheek. “I have been here for you and your mothers for a long time; I am the source you come to; I am the well from which you drink.”
For the first time, the Star seemed to me to be less bright than the cave walls. She was just an old wolf, her fur bare in patches, her eyes milky and misted, her muzzle going gray. But then she smiled, as much as a wolf can smile, and I was once more surrounded by her light and warmth, which was—was it? I could not tell—only a little less than it had been before.
“You changed when you entered the cave. We did it for you then. It is a great magic, almost,” and here she paused, stealing a glance at the woman with colorless curls, “the greatest of all. Metamorphosis is the most profound of all acts. When your light comes from our hands, and not from your grandparents and their grandparents back and back and back, to that poor girl in her tent clutching a baby to her breast, you can be like us, at least a little like us, and it is only a simple thing to change the outline of a hole.” The Wolf-Star swallowed hard. “After all, a hole is nothing but space.” After a silence deeper than a dungeon, she stood back, straight-spined, and stared down at me, speaking carefully through her silky muzzle.
“But you are not one of us. For you, this thing is irreversible except by death, and not only the flesh is altered. Only the strongest of you can resist the collapse of the soul into the form; the mind is lazy, it naturally imitates the body. I have known none of you yet who can remain human when they wear another skin. But the thing is yours to do, if you should wish to do it.”
The cold, clear hand of the jewel-girl released mine, and it had all the life of a scrap of paper blowing across an empty street. Without a word, the old gold-pelted Wolf led me back through the two doors and into the great open arena of the first cavern. It seemed a century ago that I had bent under the Mare’s teeth there, that she had made her hole in me.
“Go, Star-daughter. There is much work for you to do.”
I knew I should not, but I could not keep myself from it. I knelt and put my arms around her great, shaggy neck, burying my face in the smell of her, of cedar and wet rock, of snow just fallen. “You never know,” I whispered, “maybe the new Stars aren’t just markers. Maybe they are the Manikarnika. Maybe they went home.”
Liulfr shook her head against my skin, and the fur was like the crackle of heat-lightning. Her voice was tiny and soft. “No one goes home. A hole is nothing but space. We are accidents, and there is no grace for us.”
She pulled back and gave my cheek the briefest of licks. The Wolf-Star padded quietly away from me, vanishing before she found the far wall.
Stumbling out into the lightening world, my eyes stung by the first darts of sunlight, I sat heavily on the grass, exhaustion slamming into me like a stone wall.
And the Fox stood a few feet from me, watching me with cold eyes.
“Some who deserve failure do not achieve it,” he sniffed. “Some who deserve nothing are given the world. So, here it is, woman. The world. Go into it, but do not ever speak of what has passed here. It is forbidden to all with tongues to utter it. We want to stay hidden; we have chosen this place, and power granted can be lost. Do not think you have seen the last of me, nor ever that you are now my equal. Liulfr is hopeless and old. A filled hole is not empty space, and we were all full, so full of light. You are a thief and a vampire, and if I had my way you and your daughters would have no more of our blood.”
As the sun crept on lion’s feet over the green hills, it illuminated his fur, bristle by bristle, until he was so bright I could not look. And then he was gone, and the light shone through the place where he had been.
Out of the Garden
WHEN MIDNIGHT LAY OVER THE TWO CHILDREN LIKE A SERAPH’S BLUE arm, the boy gingerly laid his head on the girl’s lap, letting her voice cradle him. He pretended he did not hear her breath stop when he shifted, or the quaver in her voice like a single mislaid thread in a beaded gown.
But as soon as his head touched the rough fabric of her dress, a terrible crunching sound was heard as strange feet trampled the earth outside their little thicket. The girl screamed, an awful, high-pitched sound like a crane shot through with a silver arrow. The boy leapt up, drawing his pathetic little dagger, determined to protect his secret prize. But as ghostly hands ripped apart the sweet-smelling briars, he recognized that the danger was far worse than any witch or arcane spell.
The boy saw, framed in jasmine boughs like a fiery mandala, the wrathful face of his sister, her eyes filling with accusations like a judge’s scroll.
“I’ve caught you now, you vile little rat!” she crowed triumphantly. “You’ll be punished! Consorting with the demon girl!”
“She’s not a demon!” he blurted, not at all meaning to—Dinarzad was fearful as a lion in heat. The girl breathed quick and hoarse, unable to move. “She’s not! You leave us alone!”
Something of the wolf and the cave must have seeped into him, like spilled ink, for he never before had had the courage to say such a thing to her. Dinarzad swooped into the thicket like a crazed harpy—the boy could almost imagine feathers puffing from her skin—and seized him by the hair, dragging him away from the now weeping girl though he kicked and cursed like a grown man.
In his vision, the girl retreated, a moon slipping behind cobaltrimmed clouds. The light was draining from his world; all he could see was her eyes, huge and dark as forest owls, staring after him.
When they reached the gates of the Garden, the boy bit his sister savagely on her perfumed arm and she stopped, slapping him hard across the face—so hard it split his lip like a pine branch. He spat blood onto the earth.
“You may think you are a man now, little
brother, but men do not go near wicked devils like her. Do you want to bring her curse on the whole family? You spoiled little whelp! I’ll whip you till morning!”