And Zmeya wept, bitter and keen. The lights around her flashed in grief. “Please, Aerie. Take her. Put her on the raft and when your sash is tight around you again, go quickly to the mourning beast by the glass-strewn lake which Oubliette and Seven sought, and take her from the cave—you can have a cave, at last, all your own. I cannot watch another child fade to nothing.”
Aerie pursed her lips. “You did not want her, you know. It would be no worse than if you had never had her at all.”
Zmeya drew herself up, her face grave. “Do not try to shame me, woman. A hole was chewed in me, and out she came, and she deserves a chance to step down out of the dark, as I did. She is my girl, delicate and small as a Grass-Star, and I love her, I do love her.”
One of the Ittos, the one with the child’s voice, touched Sorrow’s damp hair. “She is ours, too, and we love her, and she ought not to perish here where no one can see what sort of beast a snake and a ship can make. Take her.”
“What is it you would have me do? I am too old to rear a child to grown. I do not think Laakea is the fathering type.”
Zmeya considered. “He would shut her away so no one could ever harm her, and she would never see the sun. Care for her yourself, I would ask you. Or if you cannot, find a family whose child is dead, and bear her into their open arms. Or take her to a family with linens in a new crib and jewels in their hair, with hearts which are fierce and sweet, and put her in their cradle in place of their daughter, like a magpie with her secret eggs. Find the mortal girl a home in some far-off kingdom, take her to a childless creature who might love her like its own young, but take her, take her away, and let Sorrow grow up happy and whole and fed, warm by a fire and in sight of the Sky.”
The twins stood on the mended dock and cupped their scarlet hands around their mouths. They made a long, desolate sound, like foghorns on a lonely bay. Seven and Oubliette held hands, and Aerie flared her wings in anticipation. The ferry parted the fog not long after. Zmeya bundled her daughter onto the raft, her tears splashing on the infant’s face.
“What is it you think you’re doing?” Idyll asked. “I do not bear passengers without payment. And I am not fond of being summoned like a maid.”
The assembled throng looked from one to another. “What payment can there be on this Isle?” the deep-throated Itto asked helplessly.
Slowly, Seven drew out a single yellow coin, of old bone, smoothed by his fingers. It bore a faint spider sigil. Oubliette looked at him, her eyebrows raised. “Is this child worth so much to you?” she asked.
“No,” he said simply. “But I ate the apples the first night I was here. I am sorry I lied, but you would have kept me from it. I know you will never leave her, and now I cannot, either. I do not wish to. I will never leave you. In any gray city, I will stand by you, and you will not be alone.”
Oubliette threw back her disheveled head and laughed. “I ate the plantains that night, too, that first night you were here.”
Seven squeezed her hand, and gave over the coin to the ferryman without looking at it, without weighing it in his palm. Idyll frowned and turned it over in his hands. His forehead was creased with concern and disapproval, but he allowed the child to be tucked into his bony arm. Zmeya and the twins held each other up in the midst of the fourteen lights, and they kissed their daughter over and over.
As the ferry drifted off from the shore of eyes, Aerie smiled faintly, and pressed her cheek to the serpent’s.
“Don’t worry, my dear, I know just where to take her. And I will tell your brother that you are beautiful still.” She looked around, and back toward the beachhead and the distant houses. “And not alone in the least.”
As they watched, the goose-woman’s waist cinched itself in, a thickening band of red appearing like a bloody fog—and by the time it seemed solid enough to touch, she was gone. The ferry drifted beyond the mist, leaving them alone on the dock, grim and grieving as a funeral.
In the Garden
THE BOY CLASPED HER HANDS IN HIS. THE MOON WAS SO HIGH AND bright that it scrubbed their faces in silver like an industrious nurse-maid. A stiff wind lashed the poplar branches, and the cattails rattled their woody cacophony. The girl sat in the midst of her wood, as red in her cloak as the first sun of winter.
“What happened to the child?” he cried. “Where did Aerie take her? Was she beautiful when she grew up? A warrior like all Zmeya’s other daughters?”
The girl laughed, her smile broad and glad in the night, starlight dancing on her lap, her dark eyelids rippling slightly, like the surface of the little Garden lake. The boy blushed, and the girl thought that she liked that best of all, when he could not contain how much he wanted to hear her speak, when he broached his etiquette in eagerness. The blue night shone on his cheeks in patches, and his breath was frosted in the air. Somewhere behind them, a fish jumped and splashed down with a tinkling noise.
“If you will return to the Garden, and to me, I shall tell you, and things even more strange and wonderful.” She grinned.
The girl pulled the bird of pearl from the folds of the black wolf tails and tugged on its sapphire tail. It chimed out the midnight hour, long and clear and sweet.
In the Garden
IT WAS SNOWING IN THE GARDEN.
This was not unheard-of—surely in the books of the Sultan there was a woodcut of ladies in fur collars cavorting in the
snow, little bell-strung dogs leaping at their feet. Some few flakes had even fallen when the girl was young, but certainly not this, not a blizzard which sunk men into ice to their knees. Frost had not gilded the leaves of the lemon trees in so long that even the oldest of noblewomen doddering in her bed could only dimly recall what color her dog might have been, and the sound of his jangling bells. Yet the lake had frozen into a reed-rimmed mirror, and the pine needles were sheathed in ice, glittering cold and quiet. Children cavorted; dogs leapt. New woodcuts were hurriedly pressed.
The chestnut boughs were frozen in place, and the wedding was set for the longest night of the year, so that the feast could last as long as possible. Beasts from far-off places were brought to the Palace to be roasted, and the boy sniffed at plates of rhinoceros, crocodile, camel, bear, and hippopotamus. He wondered glumly what would be served at his wedding. He was tired of being clucked over by seamstresses who seemed only to discuss how much he had grown; and how broad his chest would be in a few years. Needles glittered in their mouths like ice.
In all the delight at the snow, the Garden was blazing with candles and colors, as the Palace yearned to touch and taste the stuff for themselves. The kitchen maids stuck out their tongues to catch flakes, and young men brought frozen oranges to their lovers. Skirts of violet and emerald swished over the paths; shoes of clattering horn and oiled stag-skin spoiled the perfect white with footprints, like ink scrawled haphazardly upon a page of new paper. Among all of these the boy sometimes thought he saw the girl—but there were so many black-haired girls in the Palace, and each time he rounded a hedge or a clay bowl of winter lilies or a bare plum tree, following a stream of dark curls, there was only a pretty, rouged child with jewels on her forehead. He could not often bring himself to even apologize.
But he was sure she would come again. He knew it. The flat sky filled with drifting snow and it melted on his scalp, but he felt no cold. She was there, in the Garden, somewhere, and so he was happy enough, sure that just around the next drift she was waiting for him. When she had disappeared before, he was sure she had abandoned him, but now—had he not heard the tale of Seven and Oubliette? Did he not know himself as true a friend as the one-armed boy? Did he not know her as wild and lovely as the huldra? His faith only faltered a little, like a larch bending in a stiff wind, as the winter wore on, and the snow did not melt, and she did not appear. He chased drafts of black hair like rabbits, and the night of the wedding drew nearer, and she did not appear. Dogs leapt; bells jangled.
Finally, the night before the wedding bloomed lightless, moonless, starless. The only lights in the Garden were high braziers and candles, their flames reflecting blue and white on the sparkling, freezing ground. The boy walked through the chestnut chapel, where everything from altars to aisle was draped in cloths to keep it safe from the frost. And so it seemed that the deepest snow of all lay on Dinarzad’s dais. As he passed it, he thought he heard the chime of a little bird, and, his heart leaping, he dashed into the snow to follow it, through bloomless rosebushes and the black husks of pomegranates, through blazing, icy persimmons and knobbled acacias, all the way through the center of the Garden and through it, to the far edge, farther than he had ever run before, to the great silver Gate which ran all around the Palace grounds like a river. The bird chime led him on, and the boy’s breath was quick and fast, his brow wet, by the time he reached the filigree Gate, which showed an endless scene that circled the Garden and back again on itself, a scene of a great battle between men and monsters, in which the men had stern eyes of silver and pearl, and the beasts had craven expressions wrought in iron. Braziers capped the Gate every so often, and the wood beyond was dark and deep.