we begin in the dark
and birth is the death of us.
and birth is the death of us.
H
e cannot read her eyes.
The gold of them – they leap and burn brighter than Helio’s chariot, and Caine’s colorless silver drowns in her gold, succumbs to her luminous gaze like steel tempered in fire. He wants to look away, to retreat far, far away from that brilliance – but the drumming hollowness in his chest demands he stay, and burn.
Burn. Perhaps then he will feel something other than nothing. Perhaps then the feeling that had poured from the music box’s song like light – the feeling he can no longer feel or touch or breathe – will bathe him in warmth again.
Even if he must burn first.
Something twisted inside him (and he is twisted everywhere, like the gnarled roots of a dying oak) wonders: how long must you look at the sun for it to strike you blind?
So he does not look away. He narrows his eyes against the brilliance of her, the blood red of her pelt, the – anguish? fury? what is the difference, to a boy who cannot even recognize his own – to her lips, and waits for her words to come.
But they do not come.
Silver eyes watch as she breathes, in and out, like clockwork. He waits. For the burning (when the chariot drags across the sky), for the sun (to rise out of the gloom), for her (to say something). His timing has never been wrong. (Agenor had believed that the world ran like clockwork, mechanical and predictable if one only knew how to listen for the tick of the hands. Agenor had taught him how to listen.) So Caine knows she is going to say something. Soon she will –
When Moira’s sob comes, low and keening and gasping, Caine stills.
Silver tears drip from her eyes (where is her golden fire?) and each sob rings through the dead plains like the tolling of a clocktower.
Bewilderment flashes to life in the boy’s vacant eyes – he is a puppet reanimated, the strings tangled and wrong. Do not cry, he thinks, pleading, because it reminds him too much of death. (He hates them when they cry, because he cannot spare them. The command is absolute. He cannot spare them.)
Words choke and die in Caine's scorched throat. He forgets her name and her phoenix flames because sobs keep pouring from her lips like ash, and the boy takes each like a dagger to the chest –
And then she runs to him. Before the action registers in some untangled fragment of Caine's brain, she is there, in front of him, crashing into his chest, wings around him, everywhere, everywhere.
“You promised to teach me to fly,” comes her voice at last, but it does not quite reach him. It sounds muffled, like his head has been submerged in water and Moira is peering at him from the surface, lips ghosting over the shape of words. Her timing is wrong. The clocktower keeps tolling. He can no longer hear.
“You promised and then you left without a word. I thought you'd died, or I'd done something wrong. And I never could fold those stupid paper cranes right! How. Dare. You?”
She is so close, too close. Dread grips him by the shoulders and shakes. She is too fragile, too warm, too alive –
“Why do you care?” he whispers into her mane, dangerously quiet.
The question tears through him like an avalanche, building and building into something akin to fury. How dare I?
He feels the beating of her heart against his, fluttering like a fawn’s. Do you really think – a sharp, twisting laugh slices at his lungs – that you know me? He shudders from her embrace, from a touch he has never known. His skin burns fever-hot. Stumbling back, he lowers his chin and locks his gaze on her, unfocused and ember-bright.
You do not know anything about me, Moira Tonnerre.
He is half-hallucinating, half-delirious. He can no longer tell what is real and what is not, where is she and where is him –
And the black magic in his blood begins to scream.
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