CHAPTER NINE: LIVES NEW AND OLD

I gazed into the fire and saw both creation and destruction, life and death - two sides of the same singing blade. Only through immolation can the world be made anew.
-Aliah el Lassa, 'A Season of Fire'

Thea awoke in a warm, soft place, consciousness drizzling in like raindrops on a window pane. She stirred briefly, trying to go back to sleep before realizing she was rousing more and more by the moment. Thea pushed herself to a sit, blinked the sleep from her eyes, and took her bearings: she was in a sunlit bedroom, tastefully decorated, with the murmur of voices and the smell of fresh-baked bread coming in from the next room. She plodded out of the bedroom, tugging at her nightgown and still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The two women at the dining table paused their conversation and looked to her expectantly.

"Morning?" she said.

One of the women was Larian, changed out of her fine blue dress, the tumbling tresses of her coppery hair contrasting against a simple moss-green dress with a vest in darker green, all of it worn with use but fresh and well-mended. The other woman was slim and dark-haired, her plain features strangely similar to Larian's much more refined ones. Thea recognized her as 'Clever' Clarisse Page, Larian's mother.

"This is Theo? Big Theo?" She looked to Larian for confirmation.

"I was," Thea said. She sat across from them at the table and helped herself to a hunk of bread, slathering butter across the still-piping loaf.

"Well... you speak like he did," Clarisse said. Thea didn't care for the tone.

She sighed. "In monosyllables, you mean? Yes, granted, maybe when I've just woken up. I take it, then, that we didn't get captured by the south-men and sacrificed to their bloodthirsty god?"

"Okay," Clarisse allowed. "That doesn't sound like something Theo would have said."

Larian rolled her eyes. "I told you, mother, she changed like I did - but even more dramatically." She passed a cup of tepid tea to Thea, who happily gulped it down. "Do you remember what happened last night?"

"Bits and pieces," Thea said. Her mind flitted through flashes of a glowing goddess, at once beautiful and terrible to behold, her hair whipping as if in a maelstrom, the brilliance of countless stars sparkling about her. "Was I... did I do something crazy?"

Larian nodded. "You could say that. Something happened yesterday - for a few minutes, you were Astrilla."

"Granted, she looks the part," Clarisse said. "But I have a hard time believing that you and your friends are the scions of ancient, nigh-forgotten gods that, honestly, probably never even existed. I mean... there's got to be some other explanation."

Still hungry, Thea helped herself to oil-roasted potatoes with little bits of bacon, bypassing the ladling spoon and reaching in with greedy fingers. Larian sighed. Thea blushed, realizing what she'd just done.

"Sorry... the old habits are bubbling up. Or the new ones are settling down..."

"See? She was Theo. And I'll show you one better, mother. I showed you that I know the trade tongue as well as any poet now, when I could barely hack out a sentence in it before? Well, I'll do you one better: Thea's still got most of Theo's old proclivities - which, let's be honest, there weren't a whole lot of. But she remembers everything and learns instantaneously. Wouldn't you say that's pretty incredible?"

"What do you mean?"

Larian went to retrieve a book from her mother's shelf. Thea looked up from her potatoes and, hoping to scavenge some modicum of dignity, dabbed at her mouth as politely as she could manage. She watched Larian crouching over the bookshelf. It was the one that Theo had carried in from Vernis's a year or so ago - that she could have ever lifted such a thing, let alone carried it across town and up a flight of stairs, was practically unthinkable. And, she realized with a start, the shelf was filled with books - and it wasn't even Clarisse's only bookshelf! Such a collection was a rarity in Nortsair and practically unheard of in Rouentz. The sheer value of those volumes made Clarisse the wealthiest person in Rouentz, and the next wealthiest person wasn't particularly close. It was a fortune in books. Her whole home would have fit on one floor of the Mendics' city house, but one shelf of books could have bought that whole house. While lost in thought, Larian had placed a book in front of her and opened it.

"You don't know your letters, do you Thea?"

"You know I don't," she said, embarrassed to say it in front of Clarisse, who was the cleverest woman in Rouentz.

"Well that's 'a'," she said pointing at a letter. "It sounds like ah, ay, or aa. That's 'b', it sounds like buh..." She continued through the alphabet and then pointed out a handful of words, carefully pronouncing each. Then she nudged her mother.

"Is this some sort of trick?" Clarisse asked.

"You know it isn't. Pick any word on any page."

Clarisse did one better, fetching an old Northstar Bible and flipping it to something in the middle. She placed it atop the other book and pointed to a word. Thea glanced at it and frowned - the symbols looked strange, most of them appearing completely different from what what Larian had just showed her. Was it a trick? A different alphabet? No, Thea realized, Clarisse had placed the book upside down. She laughed at the ruse and rotated the book around. It was a short word, only three letters long.

"Ten?"

Clarisse nodded. "And this?"

"Collar?" Thea said. "No, wait... color? It's color."

Clever Clarisse nodded again. "And this one?"

Thea looked at the word and gasped. "Cano!" she shouted.

"No, it says..."

"Igna told me they were taking Cano to Rurik, his king, and implied he'd probably get sacrificed," she glanced to Clarisse - that was the word: sacrificed. "They're taking him to Purgistok! That's at sunset two days from now - we have to go! I need clothes! What am I even wearing?"

"An old night gown," Clarisse said. "I hadn't even noticed - it appears to have... changed... during the night."

"Maybe that's the power I should have lead with," Larian mused.

What had once been a modest cotton shift, too brief for Thea's height and barely able to contain her generous chest, had become a sheer thing with intricate lace and an impressive undergirding support system. Magical tailoring was an odd ability to have - but convenient, given how unlikely it was to ever find something in her size: as tall as a man and shaped like few women ever were. It was an opportunity, too, because Thea didn't want to wander into hostile lands looking like a sorceress with erotic delight on the mind.

"I..." Thea sat down again, her legs wobbling under her. Having just remembered Cano's fate, the events of the previous night started popping into being in the perfect vault of her memory. She recalled the battle... the capture... the escape... she remembered killing a score of men and bringing two girls to life. And, of course, she remembered her stint in Igna Battle-Blessed's bedchamber where her womanhood had blossomed. Where the war-chief had forced himself upon her. She began to weep. "Sorry," Thea said, hot tears beading down her cheeks. "I can't..."

"It's all right," Larian said, bringing her into a hug. "We'll save Cano together."

+++++

Larian had misinterpreted Thea's distress - of course, Thea wanted to save Cano, and of course his capture upset her... but, really, she was still dealing with a cartload of emotional fallout from the night before, and it might be some time before she recovered. Thea didn't really feel like discussing it with Larian. The girl had just been reunited with her mother and Thea didn't care to ruin that. She wanted to tell Matthias what had transpired, but she was even more loath to ruin his reunion with his daughter. And Heath? No one was quite sure where Heath was - wandered back into the woods, as far as anyone could tell.

Thea asked around after Matthias. This was more easily said than done. After what had transpired the night before, most of the townsfolk not-so-subtly avoided her, and the ones she could pin to the spot visibly fought to contain the urge to flee or prostrate themselves before a living goddess. The few who didn't do that were men who went glassy-eyed in her presence and couldn't seem to utter a coherent sentence.

Even in the plain tan dress she'd borrowed from Clarisse, you just didn't see women like Thea in Rouentz. You didn't see women like Thea anywhere. She was self-conscious of the dress at first, as it didn't remotely fit. The normally-loose fabric hung off her bosom like a shelf and the hem of the thing, which hung around mid-shin on Clarisse (who was slim and a shade above average height), barely came to Thea's knees. The ill fit was short-lived, fortunately. At some point, without her even realizing it, the dress had developed a dark brown bodice, billowing sleeves, and straps that exposed most of her slender shoulders. The dress lengthened and became more flattering, a pattern of tawny insewn stars speckled across the chocolate-brown fabric. Astrilla might not insist that Thea look like a seductive enchantress, but she wasn't going to let her look awkward or common, either. If Theo had seen a woman looking like this, he'd have been rendered completely mute (though he'd been close enough to begin with). He'd have been awestruck, much like Bull the blacksmith currently was.

"I think you've broken him, love," an old woman said.

Bull just stared at her, his mouth opening and closing but making no noise, his eyes flicking between Thea and the nearest alleyway, as if deciding whether to declare his undying love or make a hasty escape.

"You're not afraid of me?" Thea asked the old woman... Viona Pastor's mother, if she recalled correctly.

"You're the pretty girl that killed the south-men and brought those girls back from the hereafter?" she asked, squinting and pulling at the light tan fabric of Thea's sleeve. She shrugged. "Thought you'd look scarier. Seems like your heart's in the right place and I figure there's not much I could do if you decide wickedness suits you instead."

Thea nodded. "I'm looking for my friend Matthias... one of the ones who got captured at the palisade last night. Dark skin, strange hair?"

"Him?" The old woman chuckled. "Last I heard, him and his miracle girls were at Swill Bill's offering benediction for coin."

"What?" Thea said, and before the old woman could respond, she stormed off toward 'Swill Bill's' tavern.

It wasn't that Thea was opposed to benediction. Fra Hollen had done that all the time, but he'd never charged a ruddy cupra for it. Sure, Fra would accept eggs, bread, or fresh fruit in exchange for blessings, but even such meager payment was never expected, and he gave most of that to the poor. Whenever Thea thought she was starting to understand Matthias, something new came to light - more often than not, something she didn't like. A scion did not charge for services rendered. But, sure enough, Matthias seemed to be doing just that: there was a line half-way around the tavern - thirty or forty townsfolk waiting to enter the building, many of them clutching at what was probably their only meager savings. She pushed her way past the burly form of 'Ma' Miller in Swill Bill's doorway.

"Hey!" Ma Miller said, giving Thea a shove.

Thea had about a head's height on the woman, but Ma probably had five stone on her weight-wise. The shove should have sent her sprawling, but Thea found herself twirling, redirecting the momentum, and weaving her way right into the throng inside Swill Bill's. She didn't feel agile or fleet-footed, and she certainly couldn't run like a stallion, toss people like ragdolls, or shoot master-marksman arrows from out of nowhere, but sometimes Thea's new body surprised her. In an instant, she found herself well into the tavern, past a line of people grumbling at her impertinence, and navigating toward Matthias.

To his credit, Matthias didn't have the look of a charlatan - his expression was one of utter bewilderment. His daughter, looking every bit as transformed as her father, sat upon his lap with his oil decanter in her small hands, its orange-red and resinous liquid sloshing as she applied droplets to her finger. As the people in line reached the front, they'd clasp their hands and kneel, at which point Maddie would trace out a rune upon their forehead with the oil. Afterward, they would stand and shake Matthias's hand, often passing a coin or family trinket with the handshake, and he would frown in consternation, perhaps signaling that the offering barely met his expectation, and then drop it with a little clink in the wooden box by his feet.

"Matthias! What in the world are you doing?" Thea asked.

"Um..." He regarded her for a moment, perhaps gauging whether the wrath of Astrilla was upon him, or merely the wrath of Thea. All eyes in the place were on them. "Thea... you look, um, well?"

"That's the lady I dreamed of when I was dead," Maddie whispered without much attempt at secrecy. "Except she was glowing then, and this time she seems mad instead of sad..."

"Thea, you know Maddie, I suppose? I'm, um... it seems we're celebrities now?"

Thea bent down and hissed into his ear: "How can you take money from these people? Don't you know how poor we are?" These were her people. She reached into the box and fished out a silver earring with a pea-sized bead of turquoise, dangling it in front of him. "This is worth more than a homesteader makes in a month!"

He hissed back: "I know! Do you think I don't know that? I came in here for a fucking drink, Thea. A drink! An old guy asks if Maddie will bless him, since she's come back from the dead and what have you, and she reaches for my oil, like she knows exactly what she's doing, and does the little zig-zag on his head. Then he stands up, declares he's healed, loud and clear for everyone to hear, and presses a wad of sweaty cupras into my hand! I didn't ask for their money, Thea! But they won't stop giving me things, and the line keps getting longer!"

Thea looked back to the line. She was getting a lot of angry glares… glares that quickly became contrite and downcast as soon as her attention swept back to them. She looked back to Matthias, who shrugged. Maddie smiled and sloshed the 'holy oil' around. Thea looked back to the crowd and decreed in her best goddess voice (which was, at best, three Theas worth of volume and not the thousand she'd managed the night before):

"I hereby decree that none shall pay for their benediction!" With a grunt, she hefted the wooden box of trinkets and set it upon the table with a thump. "Whatever you volunteer here today shall pay for construction of the new palisade and the new keep where the great-hall once stood."

She turned back to Madeline Mendic with two fingers outstretched, waiting for the girl to drip some oil upon her fingers.

"Go ahead," Matthias said.

The girl did so. Thea took her oily, aromatic fingers to Maddie's forehead and traced out the shape of the star. "Go in peace, Madeline Mendic," she said. "This is the shape of my blessing. Do you understand?"

"No more Rune of Soenim?" The girl asked.

Ah. That made sense. "No more rune - it doesn't belong here. You may use my star, or else the broken circle of the northern One God… if a person specifically asks for it. But Soenim is not welcome here, and I'll not have you bless people in his name."

"Okay," Maddie said, duly chastened. And, as Thea turned away, she whispered to her father: "Did you see how her head was sparkling? I think that was really pretty."

And, as she walked out of Swill Bill's, past the line of no-longer-grumbling patrons and past a very apologetic Ma Miller, Thea wondered exactly how much of the goddess still resided within her. She felt a pulse of something deep within her core, some dormant power, and she wondered whether she would ever learn to control it... or would it would some day completely subsume her, as it had nearly done last night?

+++++

Thea had a lot to think about. She wasn't sure how she felt about that - having a lot to think about was a pretty new problem for her. Neither counting to ten, driving in fence posts, nor listening to Fra Hollen took a lot of deep thought, and now Fra was dead.

While waiting for Matthias to finish his nonsense with benedictions, Thea went to check on her remaining friends - and found it to be a short list, indeed. She wandered out to young Albard's homestead and, after getting past a very suspicious Megs Rhett (Albard's wife) and speaking with the man, finally convinced him of her identity by pacing out to the post he'd been driving in when the first group of marauders marched in. She recounted the whole story to an astonished Albard.

"That's a hell of a thing, miss," he agreed, checking back to the house to confirm that Megs was still watching like a hawk.

"It is," Thea agreed. "I'm not mad that you left me there - it would have taken too long to explain, I imagine."

"I imagine so," Albard agreed. He chewed at the fuzz of his beard. "I hope you don't mind if I don't invite you to supper, on account of Megs being funny." It would seem that Megs Rhett didn't care for strange, beautiful goddesses milling about her farm.

"No offense taken. Maybe I'll see you around."

"Maybe so," Albard said... and, Thea suspected, he meant it about as much as she did.

Theo had lots and lots of vague acquaintances about town - in a community as small as Rouentz, you got to know just about everybody who wanted to be known. Who had he been closest to? Bull (whom he'd helped with heavy things), young Albard (whom he'd helped with heavy things), and Vernis Woodman (whom he'd helped with heavy things). All he'd really known about the men was that they were friendly, fed him well, and had families and professions that he only vaguely understood. So... where did that leave Thea in the scheme of Rouentz? Where did she fit in? For all her newfound clarity, Thea couldn't for the life of her think of a future that had her settling down happily in her home town.

"You look like you have a lot on your mind," Matthias said. "Sorry about the nonsense with benedictions - I wish it had never come up just as much as you."

Thea managed a smile. "I'm really glad to hear that," she said.

It was late afternoon when he found her out in the commons flipping through her fourth borrowed book - Clarisse had agreed to let her borrow them one at a time. Larian's mother was glad that someone valued her books... she'd been a bit put off when the marauders had tromped through her home, tromped right by her bookshelf, and tromped out with her box of mostly-costume jewelry, the total worth of which was maybe equivalent to one of her more common books. Thea was in the shade oak of the common by herself (none of the townsfolk being brave enough to approach and ask for benediction), and flipping through a book of herbalism written in Svandic (which she'd accidentally taught herself to read) when Matthias found her. He sat down next to her and leaned against the trunk of the tree with a sigh.

"That's a strange writing system," he said.

"It's Svandic," Thea said, looking up from the book. "Do you know your letters?"

Matthias shrugged. "Some of them. Not those ones." He watched her reading for a moment, and when Thea finished her chapter and looked up, he didn't draw his eyes away. Thea missed his dark eyes - as he transformed to fit his god's preferences, Matthias's eyes had taken on a lustrous, almost burnished quality, and they were strangely reflective in the sunlight. "You look like you've got a lot on your mind," he said.

"I have," she replied. "It would take all day to list all my problems. I wish I could just spend a week in the shade of this tree and read all of Clarisse's books..."

"It's nice having nothing to do," Matthias agreed. "And no mortal wounds to recover from." He lifted his tunic to show how the wound had healed without so much as a mark. His tunic was light tan with gold buttons in the fashion of the northern traders and his skin was like theirs, too - the color of coffee (which was also from there) with a dash of cream. "I'd like to stay here for a while..."

"That would be nice," Thea agreed - maybe with good company, good beer, and lots and lots of books. "But we've got to save Cano first. Rurik will kill him at sunset in two days' time if we don't stop them."

"I'll wish you luck, then," Matthias said. "Cano's a good man. He saved us..."

"He's fifteen," Thea said.

"Right. Easy to forget. We all owe Cano a lot... and I owe you so much more for saving Maddie. I'd gallop right after you in a heartbeat if I didn't have her and Svilga..."

"Who?"

Matthias pointed to two girls playing in the distance. Maddie, with her mocha skin and tufts of ebon-dark hair and a smaller girl, perhaps a year younger, with pale skin, her hair long wisps of flaxen gold. They could hardly have been more different complexion-wise.

"Maddie's friend," Matthias said. "I suppose we're her new family now. I can't possibly leave them, and you don't even know where this Purgistok thing is..."

"You're going to Purgistok?" Maddie asked.

Thea blinked. Not three seconds before, Maddie had been thirty yards away across the commons and playing with Svilga... even now, the younger girl was looking about, confused. Then she spotted Maddie and ran up to them, pulling Maddie into a hug and laughing.

"I've got to save my friend from there," Thea said. "But I don't know where it is..."

"We know where it is," Svilga said.

Maddie nodded. "I saw it when I was dead... they have so many people there. Great Soenim - he's who we were sacrificed to, you know..." If Thea didn't know better, the girl looked proud of that fact. "Soenim lives under the mountain there, he drinks the blood, he drinks it up."

"And when he's done, he burps and... yum! A thousand lives to slake his need," Svilga added.

"That's a bedtime story that Yrli would tell us," Maddie said. "He was Igna's house-thrall, but he got sacrificed the same day we did."

"That's seriously disturbing," Matthias said.

"Exactly. We have to rescue Cano... who knows what a sacrificed scion will do for Soenim... assuming he's real?"

"He is," Svilga said quickly.

Matthias stared at Thea for a second, his attention then flitting back and forth between her and Maddie. "Are you daft?" he said - he didn't mean for that to hurt her, but it did. Daft, dumb Theo. "Maddie can't go into the south-men's land to help you track down Cano. She's staying here, where it's safe."

"Very safe," Thea agreed. "Right up until Bestel Myrdon decides to march into town and have every man, woman, and child tear one another to bloody ribbons. Then I imagine it'll be as safe as the masquerade, from homestead to homestead as far as the eye can see. A very safe place for vultures and crows."

Matthias cursed, and the bark of the oak started blackening and smoking behind his back. He hopped to his feet and stomped at the little flames along the trunk, as if this wasn't an entirely unexpected occurrence. He glowered at Thea. "I'm personally naming you co-guardian of these children. Their safety is my only concern - and, given a choice between saving Cano or saving <i>either</i> of them I won't hesitate for an instant."

"Neither will I," Thea said. "So you'll help?"

"We'll help."

"You'll help!" Thea said. She leapt to her feet and hugged him with such vehemence than both girls were in hysterics.

+++++

That night, Thea stayed with Clarisse and Larian again, albeit not on the bed - it was Larian's bed, apparently, and she'd got it the night before out of deference to her having erupted into a display of godlike power and then collapsing, insensate. Matthias offered to let her stay with them at the tavern, but she could tell he had reservations about it. She had reservations about it, too - she worried that, should one thing lead to another, they'd soon be in the throes of passion and she might accidentally suck the life right out of his body and ascend into goddesshood again. Though, as it turned out, carnal passion probably wouldn't have been in the cards:

"The girls both had terrible dreams," Matthias told her the next morning. "They remember being killed, and they remember the ghosts of their friends. The sooner we can put Rouentz behind us the better - the dead that remain are unhappy... they covet life and are angry that the girls got it and they didn't."

"Especially Hortice." Maddie rubbed her eyes - she certainly didn't look like she'd slept well. None of them did. "She's my sister."

"The other girl-thrall that Igna sacrificed," Matthias said with a sigh. "Hortice isn't your sister."

"You said that Svilga can be my sister now," she stated. "That means Hortice can be my sister, too, even if she's dead."

"Fine, yes." He shot Thea a pointed look. "Maddie and Svilga had horrible dreams, courtesy the poor, lost soul of their 'sister', Hortice."

Thea knelt down and hugged Maddie - Svilga was across the room and greedily scarfing down tavern breakfast. "I'm sorry about your dreams," she said. "I'm not sure we can make Hortice happy, but she can't stray far from here and she'll fade before too long. If she wants peace, she'll find it."

"How could you possibly know that?" Matthias asked.

"Before I was this, I was star-touched," Thea said. "Remember... I was a big man named Theo - as tall as you are now, and much broader… and not a whole lot going on between the ears. I can remember being him, and I like to think I have the same soul, and it's just that it never got a chance to blossom until now. Regardless, my life now is so different that I can hardly imagine being like him again. Theo was star-touched and would sometimes see things that nobody else could - shades, spirits, and whatever other things inhabit the shadows of our dreams."

"Well, at least that hasn't changed."

He pointed to the corner of the room and Thea shrieked, which made both girls giggle. There, in the corner, was a huddled woman - a shade. Her clothes were a tatters, her whole body ash-gray, and sightless eyes looking out into nothing.

"I didn't sleep much, either," Matthias said.

They left later that morning after tracking down Larian and arranging for horses for their travel. They took Matthias's two remaining horses - it seemed that one had been stolen by a fleeing marauder and the other two left to wander... and they'd wandered right over to the Millers' orchard and helped themselves to three trees worth of low-lying fruit. The two girls took the mountain blue, arguing amongst themselves who got to take the reins before Matthias declared that they should take turns. Larian took her mother's horse, plus one more procured from Clarisse's considerable 'book fund', which the marauders hadn't managed to find. The horse was a sleek brown filly, just about fully-grown, and Thea immediately claimed it. Whatever thoughts Larian had on that, she kept them to herself.

Larian was occupied with matters other than horses. Thea had to pry her away from a conference with the masons and woodworkers. Her near-infinite wealth of knowledge included (apparently) how to effectively shore up a village's defenses, and the craftspeople were gathered around, eagerly nodding as she pointed to various parts of the village, explained what needed doing, and scribbled chalk diagrams onto sheets of roofing clay. Larian could do a lot of good for the village, no doubt, but she was only one woman and could make a lot more difference helping to rescue Cano. Or so Thea told her.

"I want to rescue him, too," she said. "I'm just worried... what happens if they come back? What happens if 'uncle' Myrdon gets greedy and rides for Rouentz?"

"If that happens," Thea said, "we can do a lot more good with Cano and his sword than without."

Larian couldn't disagree with that, and so they rode out.

OvidLemma

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