83
MOST THINGS THAT MATTER
Karou held a gavriel on her palm. Everyone was gathered around her in the grand cavern. Chimaera, Misbegotten, humans. And Eliza, whatever she was now. Karou looked to where the girl was standing back by Virko’s side, and she didn’t know what Eliza was, but that they shared this: They were neither of them quite human, but something more, and each the only one of her kind.
“What will you wish?” asked Zuzana.
Karou looked back down at the medallion, so heavy in her hand. Brimstone seemed to gaze back at her. It was a crude casting, but it still brought his eyes home to her in a rush, and his voice, so deep it had been like the shadow of sound.
“I dream it, too, child,” he’d told her in the dungeon as she awaited execution, and she wished she could show him what was before her now—though no wish could ever accomplish that. See what we’ve done. See how Liraz and Ziri stand side by side. She would bet anything that the skin of their arms, so close to touching, was electrified as her own skin had been earlier, when Akiva was near her. And there was Keita-Eiri, who just a few days ago had been flashing her hamsas at Akiva and Liraz and laughing. She stood beside Orit, the angel from the war council who had glared across the table, arguing with the Wolf about the discipline of his soldiers. And Amzallag, who was ready, in the body Karou had made for him—not massive and gray like his last, or horrifying—to go and draw the souls of his children out of the ashes of Loramendi.
They were solemn and united, comrades who had fought together and survived an impossible battle, and who carried with them the mystery of it, and even more than solidarity. After the Adelphas, there was a creeping sense of destiny.
Destiny. Once again, Karou couldn’t shake the sense that, if there was such a thing, it hated her.
As to Zuzana’s question, what was she going to wish on this gavriel? What could she wish that would bring Akiva back to her, that would quell this vicious feeling stealing over her that they might accomplish everything they had believed they needed to, and still not be allowed to have each other? Brimstone had always been very clear as to the limits of wishing.
“There are things bigger than any wish,” he’d said, when she was a little girl. “Like what?” she’d asked, and his answer haunted her now, this gavriel heavy in her hand, and all she wanted was to believe that it could solve her problems. “Most things that matter,” was what Brimstone had said, and she knew he was right. She couldn’t wish for the dream, or for happiness, or for the world to just let them be. She knew what would happen. Nothing. The gavriel would just lie there, Brimstone’s likeness seeming to accuse her of foolishness.
But wishes weren’t useless, either, so long as you respected their limits.
“I wish to know where Akiva is,” she said, and the gavriel vanished from her palm.