“We aren’t our parents,” Sarai had told Minya shortly after her own death. “We don’t have to be monsters.”
Minya still maintained that monsters are useful to have on hand, and Sarai had to agree—so long as they were on your side, and weren’t, for example, making you bite a lip you wished to lick, or any other such grave misdeed.
Minya shrugged and declared her “boring.”
Boring was not the word Sarai would use to describe licking Lazlo’s lip, or anything else in her life these days—or her afterlife, if you wished to be technical. She was still bound to Minya, and still a ghost, with all the restrictions that went along with it. As Great Ellen had told her before, “It isn’t life, but it has its merits.”
“Such as being a slave to Minya?” she’d asked then, but she had good reason to hope it wouldn’t be like that. Minya hadn’t possessed her since waking up on the floor, and though she’d yet shown no outward signs of… Ellenness? .. . to hint at new wholeness, she was not her old self, either. Sarai found herself watching her, wondering what was at work in her. Were her fragments finding a way to mesh back together into a single person?
This scrutiny did not go unnoticed. “Must you look at me like that?” Minya demanded.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a child you need to take care of.”
Sarai didn’t know what to say to that. Was Minya a child or not a child? She was both and neither. “Fine. But I haven’t thanked you yet. For saving me.”
“Which time?” asked Minya, ungracious. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about feelings. As she looked at Sarai, the impulse to make Great Ellen’s hawk face was overwhelming, but of course her face couldn’t do it. The fragments were back, and they felt too big for her, like extra pits shoved into a plum. Add to it the gratitude and tenderness that were coursing up Sarai’s tether, and she felt like she might split apart and explode.
“Minya…” Sarai started to say, because she actually still hadn’t thanked her, but she found that her mouth abruptly stopped working, and then she was turning, and her feet, through no effort of her own, were carrying her away. She couldn’t even make a sound of startled protest. The conversation was over, and the clock reset on how long since her last possession.
…
With the arrival of the Lady Spider, the crew of the Astral was all accounted for—that was the name they’d decided on: the Astral, as “Wraith” sounded menacing, and they all appreciated the layered meanings of star voyagers and souls sent forth, and that it honored Sarai’s gift as well as Korako’s.
They were eager to go, to cast off from this moorage and begin. It was as easy as wishing. Lazlo had only to will the eagle to fly and it did. It glided above Arev Bael—“the Devourer,” which had devoured Nova—and even navigated between the tezerl stalks with an endowed intelligence that did not require his conscious guidance. They went west, toward Var Elient’s ez-Meliz portal, where, in a few days’ time, they would encounter people—people from another world—and make themselves and their mission known.
They were fourteen in all: nine godspawn (including one ghost) and five humans, which had necessitated a lengthening of the table in the gallery. They all convened for their first meal of the voyage, and found themselves settling into places that were beginning to feel like their own. The food was so much better now, and they were all learning how to cook, thanks to the tutelage of the fourteenth and most unexpected member of the crew: Suheyla.
“Are you sure?” Eril-Fane had asked his mother at least a hundred times before their final farewell.
“Quite,” she had assured him, bright-eyed. “What else am I to do? My house washed away.”
Eril-Fane was a patient son. “We can build you a new house,” he’d pointed out. There would be quite a lot of that going on in Amezrou.
“What a bother,” she’d said, “when this one’s already built.” She’d gestured around herself, and how could he argue? Already she’d made her mark on this place, from the rugs and cushions she’d looted shamelessly from the Merchants’ Guildhall to the hooks she’d directed Lazlo to fashion over the table, for the hanging up of discs of hot bread.
Suheyla had grasped her son’s hand. “I’ll be back, you know, but I do have to go. Our people need you. These children need me.”
It was true, and it was good to be needed, and to think that she could have a hand in shaping the men and women these powerful young people would become. They needed a grandmother, someone who knew how to do things, who could teach them how to take care of themselves—and, all-importantly, bake cake—and provide a seasoned perspective as they faced their unguessable trials.
That was her main reason for joining them, and it was reason enough. The other she hadn’t spoken aloud, but her interest in Skathis’s ledger did not go unnoticed. Lazlo, without comment, made sure to find time to read it with her, tracking down the names of babies born in a certain month forty years earlier, and trying to trace when and where they’d been sold.
Perhaps she would find her lost child, perhaps not. She would certainly find lost children—more lost children, that is. Make no mistake, that’s what these children were, though a little less lost every day. She did what she could. They were remarkably resilient, even Minya, who had been through the most. She didn’t say very much, and Suheyla didn’t press her. She mothered her by stealth, in small doses, and often without direct eye contact, the way one might set a skittish cat at ease.
The girl had changed her ragged garment, at last, for one Suheyla left where she could find it, and she had a loose tooth, her first ever, which had to mean that whatever had frozen her age at six had unfrozen, and that she would not continue forever a child. That night at dinner, the tooth came out.
She was biting into bread and gave a little gasp. Her hand flew to her mouth, and out it fell, tiny as a kitten tooth. She stared at it with mingled wonder and horror. “A piece of my body just fell off,” she said darkly.
Tzara choked a little on the wine she was swallowing.
“It’s all right,” said Kiska. “There’s a better one where that came from. Just wait.”
Minya knew how it worked. She’d been through it with Sarai and Feral, Ruby and Sparrow, and had, as Great Ellen, strung their baby teeth onto little necklaces she kept in a wooden box. As for what to do with her own, Suheyla said to put it under her pillow and make a wish. “That’s what we do in Amezrou.”
“And I suppose all the wishes come true,” Minya said, sarcastic.
“Of course not, silly girl,” Suheyla retorted. She had not grown up in an era of optimism, but that didn’t mean they’d lived without dreams. “Wishes don’t just come true. They’re only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bull’s-eye yourself.”
Chapter 64
A New Generation of Wishes
Sarai was still thinking about those words later, when she went with Lazlo back to their room. They were sharing one, larger than the others’, but not by double. It preserved some elements of the glade Lazlo had made, notably the bed crafted especially for the goddess of dreams. The iguana was still around, occasionally prowling out from the undergrowth to beg for a treat.
“Do you remember what Suheyla said about wishes?” Sarai asked, sinking down onto the bed.
“About the bull’s-eye?” Lazlo asked, following her down. His weight made a divot in the mattress that pulled her toward him. “I liked it.” He nuzzled her, his breath warm on her cheek. “I must be a pretty good archer, because all my wishes have come true.”
“All of them?” she asked, closing her eyes, smiling as he kissed her neck. “Then you’d better get some new ones. You can’t let yourself run out of wishes.”