There’s something crucial about it, as though Wonder will need to heal sometime in the future.
***
In addition to archery drills, lectures ensue. She and her classmates sit in an enclave, in a misty cove of waterfalls. Gathered in a semicircle, they listen to the Guides and Fate Court explain an important fact: Wonder’s class is the most elite and promising archers of the Peaks.
Terms likecaliberandethos,humanityanddestiny, get bandied about. The latter skips through Wonder’s mind becausedestinyis such a pretty word. Wouldn’t it look magical scripted in calligraphy?
Harmony quirks an eyebrow. The silent reprimand causes Wonder to straighten and pay attention, all the while directing covert glances at her peers.
She likes each of them, even if they’re a fussy lot.
Anger has tight eyebrows and longish, storm-battered hair. Envy smirks with no shortage of vanity, as if he’s made of caramel—delectable and pleasurable. Sorrow gnaws on her lower lip, and her eyes are the color of tears. Love has raven hair and smooth hands, and Anger keeps looking at Love, and she keeps ignoring him.
In fact, Love—who’s the first goddess in history to represent that emotion—stops concentrating on the lesson. This makes Anger grumpy, but it makes Wonder feel less strange about her own meandering, which makes her smile.
Usually, whenever Wonder goes off on tangents, Anger loses his patience. Sorrow pinches the bridge of her nose. Envy makes gooey comments targeted at Wonder’s blush, since he adores attention and gets crabby when he loses it. Meanwhile, Love either snickers—she enjoys whatever annoys Anger—or minds her own business, too busy contemplating her fingers to care.
During the instruction, it’s nice to see another peer lost in thought. It gives Wonder permission to rebel a tad more.
***
She should be in bed. She should be home, in her house mounted on stilts, above a glossy pool of water. She should be resting in her private refuge where eucalyptus, white stephanotis, and purple peonies dangle from the ceiling, spill from the windowsills, and frame her front door.
But she’d been imagining, thinking, debating. She hadn’t been able to sleep or keep still. So why bother?
Being a renegade is ever so much fun!
Resting on her back atop the hill, Wonder consults the galaxy while blades of green tease her earlobes. She greets her birth star—once she locates it flittering aimlessly through the firmament—and then deliberates without constraint.
From her Guide and trips to the mortal realm, she’s been learning the textures of imagination, the sounds of uncertainty and bewilderment, the tastes of deliberation and fascination, and the sights of reverence and curiosity. She’s been studying the intricacies of awe and the framework of astonishment. She’s been mastering how to identify these things, how to measure them in humans, what physical and verbal signs to look for.
But what is the actual essence of wonder? What does it mean to drift?
Is there a limit? Is there an end?
Why do flowers grow from the soil but not from the sky? What would it be like to pluck stars from their roots, the way she plucks primroses?
What’s the farthest an arrow has ever flown? What would a bow look like if it were constructed to shoot backwards?
What is fate? Does it have an opposite?
And what’s in the building at the bottom of that valley?
***
Books! It’s a galaxy of books!
Wonder halts at the threshold, her mouth hanging ajar. The world beyond is a treasure chest of upright shelves and cases embedded into receding niches, each branded by foil titles and metallic lettering. There are collections of tomes and volumes, scrolls and vellum, and so…many…pages.
It’s called the Archives. Tucked within the forest at the basin’s core, it’s the great, ethereal library of the Fates.
The building is a divinity, a shrine to words, a temple of knowledge and stories and legends. Multiple levels and offices contain study desks and reading chairs. Outside the windows, ancient branches sprout with leaves tipped in amethyst. Inside, it smells of ink and pages.
It’s as timeless and sacred as a mausoleum, yet so very alive. Only one other place has ever truly felt like home to Wonder—the hyacinth hill. But here is another haven that spurs an intrinsic reaction in her womb, coupled with a giddy tingle through her fingers.
Inside these bookish halls dwell more questions and mysteries. The sponge of her mind soaks up the cavernous hush of voices, the flipping of parchment sheets, and the scratch of quills. Nearby, a librarian rotates an atlas, and a keeper strides past geography charts, which indicate some kind of cartography section.
Wonder’s head whirls with pure elation, and her feet shuffle restlessly. Oh, to be an aficionada of this environment. As much as she appreciates the preordained power to wield awe with her bow, if she could be any goddess, Wonder would be a deity of libraries.
