“What do you mean?”
“There was supposed to be a comet that night, one that passes only every few decades. We’d been carefully planning where it would be in our sky, and I remember waking up that morning, but after that . . . nothing. The next thing I knew, the comet had passed and Begonia was shaking me awake in the sombersweet. Galantha was dead, and the world was white with bloodleaf petals. Mathuin was just . . . gone. And I . . . I was the warden. Sometime during the comet and before she died, Galantha had rung the Ilithiya’s Bell and passed on her mantle to me.”
I was silent, digesting.
“Each of the wardens watches over an age in the history of mankind. Galantha’s was the Seventh, the Maiden Age. Supposed to be like spring: full of beginnings and new life and hope. It should have lasted centuries, but she got only a year. I am the Warden of the Eighth, the Mother Age. A time of nurturing and growth, like summer.” Her jaw tightened. “Ironic, considering I cannot have children.”
“How do you know you—”
“Trust me,” Rosetta snapped. “I’ve tried. Where do you think the stories came from? A witch in the wood, tempting travelers from the road? No, Mathuin Greythorne was the first, but he wasn’t the last. I’ve gained a reputation over the years. Renaltan mothers began to warn their impressionable sons and daughters early, lest they wander and fall prey to my enticements.” There was a wicked, self-mocking curve to her mouth. “But to no avail. It is kind of funny, isn’t it? A barren Warden of the Mother Age.
“The Ninth Age is next,” Rosetta continued, “the Crone Age. Sure to bring all kinds of devastation and darkness. It will need a new warden to greet it. One who has the specific traits necessary to see the earth through it. But between Onal and me, there are no inheritors of Nola’s direct line left to whom I could pass the mantle. It may be that I could select someone else, but without the bell, I can’t even try. Which means I will have to carry the burden forever. I’ll never get to die.”
“How do you know you’ll never die?”
Grimly, she said, “Trust me, I’ve tried that, too.”
I went quiet for a minute. Then I said, “Would it be so bad, an eternal age of the Mother? Most people would be happy for the chance to live forever. Isn’t that what the Tribunal is attempting, with their experimental wolves?”
“Alone?” Rosetta shivered, though it was not cold in the Cradle. “Only someone who has never known true loneliness would say such a thing. The Mother Age can’t last forever; I can already feel it stretching too tightly. Sooner or later, the balance will break. And when it does, if there’s no warden to tend to it . . . it will be catastrophic. Everything . . . everyone . . . could die. Trust me when I say the only thing more terrifying than death is the prospect of an endless life in an empty world.”
She paused then, considering Galantha’s grimoire for a moment before turning her piercing eyes on me. “But . . . there may be a single solution for both our problems.”
“Oh?” I cocked my head to the side as that strange sense returned—not of rightness, exactly. More like . . . inevitability. It tugged at me like a waning tide, a soft demand for me to follow. I didn’t fight it. It was probably useless to try. I’d waded this far in; I might as well let the current take me a little farther. “I’m listening.”
She said, “You’d have to go into the Gray.”
15
“Shouldn’t we tell Kellan and Onal that we’re doing this?”
Rosetta, who had produced a wad of strange, silvery string from some hidden pocket within the ragged layers of her skirts, was laying it out in a wide, weblike arrangement, knotting and twisting it and tracing tiny patterns in the air over it, all according to the incomprehensible notes within Galantha’s grimoire. Her work lacked the boldness and immediacy of my blood magic, but there was definite power in the delicate intricacy of her art. Feral magic had, to me, always sounded wild and uncontrolled, when in fact, I observed, it was the opposite: it was rhythmic and methodical, a natural extension of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
Without looking up, she said, “Do you think either one of them will be excited to have you go wandering alone in the spectral plane?”
I pursed my lips, imagining Kellan’s concerned, furrowed brow and Onal’s disdainful scowl. “You’re right. We can’t tell them.”
“If my hunch is right, walking the Gray will be easy for you; you may have already been doing it on your own, in your sleep. This way, you’ll be fully conscious in your spectral body, and better able to control what you see.”
“Is there any danger?”
Rosetta’s hands went still on her string, halfway through making another tie in the web. “If I said yes, would you be dissuaded from going in?”
I thought of Kellan and the bloodcloth. “No.”
“Then, yes. There is. According to Galantha’s writings, the initial entrance into the Gray should be quite painless. It’ll be like stepping into a mirror; everything is backwards, which might be a little disorienting. But she said it is also like wading into a river; the farther you go, the more powerful the currents, and the more likely you are to be swept away.”
“And what happens if I don’t make it back?”
She checked the green-bound book. “Your consciousness would be adrift in a dimension Galantha calls ‘the all-at-once.’ My best guess is that your subtle self would go mad while your material body wasted away and died. So try not to get too lost.”
I cringed, thinking of the Bleeding Dream. “I’ll do my best.”
“Now, here. You have to lie in the center of the spell.” She helped me step into the starry silver oval. With the green of the sombersweet leaves behind it, it resembled the facets in a vivid emerald. As I lay down in the center and settled myself into place, Rosetta took out a bundle of dried sombersweet and used it to draw another pattern in the air. It started to burn, giving off a rich, sweet-scented smoke that made my head swim.
“Keep in mind: What happens in the Gray is really happening. Or has happened. Or will. You are insubstantial, but what you’re seeing is not.” She forced herself into a soothing monotone. “Breathe the sombersweet in and concentrate. Separate your thoughts from the weight of the body that contains them. You are the you you see in a mirror. You are your reflection.”
“This isn’t working,” I said after a while, but Rosetta didn’t appear to be listening. Above me, the sky had changed color. No longer was it a star-sprinkled midnight blue; it was now a bright sapphire color that shifted to a deep oceanic green and back again. The lightning buzz of the ley lines began to hum along the silver strings and, without warning, the silver melted into liquid that spread and pooled around me. Soon, I was no longer lying among sombersweet blossoms: my back was flat against a silver, mirrorlike disc.