Page 28 of While the Dark Remains
“She was always evasive about her family,” Saga says one afternoon, the day already darkening and cold with stinging sleet. “I was only ten when she came to the palace to be my handmaiden; she was thirteen. She was horribly serious at first—I thought she didn’t like me. But one day she helped me dump sand in Vil’s bed because he was being annoying, and we were fast friends after that.” The memory sparks a smile that quickly turns sad. Saga pulls her hood tighter down over her forehead.
I glance ahead to where Vil rides; his shoulders are tight, the grief radiating off him.
“How did Indridi come to be your handmaiden?” I ask, because I feel like Saga is waiting for me to say something.
“Noblemen from all over the country send their sons and daughters to Staltoria City to train as attendants. We can’t take all of them, of course. There’s a rigorous interview process.”
I gnaw on the inside of my cheek. The hood of my cloak is stiff with ice.
“She must have been a good liar,” Saga says, “to make it through the training and the interviews. To be appointed my handmaiden. A damn good liar.”
“Or someone powerful lied for her,” I say.
Saga sniffs and scrubs at her eyes. “Do you think a person should be more loyal to their country or their faith, Brynja?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Your country sustains your body,” she says. “Your faith sustains your soul.”
I blink thoughtfully into the sleet, the dark. “I guess it all depends on what matters more to you: your body or your soul.”
“Indridi’s country and her faith were the same thing,” says Saga.
“The Iljaria have no faith,” I counter.
“Yes, they do. Their faith is in themselves. In their magic and their long lives and their ancestry. But I still can’t believe—” She takes a breath, clearly fighting fresh tears.
“What can’t you believe, Saga?” I say quietly.
“That the Iljaria would send a child. She was with us forten years, Brynja.”
I don’t know how to answer. I try not to see Indridi, screaming, fire licking up her hair and smoke curling off her fingers. But I can’t see anything else.
“I suppose when you live for hundreds of years, like the Iljaria do, a decade doesn’t really matter.” Saga gnaws on her lip as she glances over to meet my eyes. “But I bet it mattered to Indridi.”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I bet it did.”
Pala tells us a story as we huddle together miserably in the larger tent, barely shielded from the dripping, freezing dark. I doubt I’m the only one thinking of Indridi’s fire, warm and red and driving back the rain. Pala doesn’t seem like the type of person to care for stories, but perhaps she has grown tired of the sorrow, the silence, that mark our evening campsites.
“Now the Gray Goddess and the Green Goddess are sisters, but they have never understood one another. The Gray Goddess brings decay wherever she treads; beneath the Green Goddess’s heels, flowers spring up. They are death and life, each a half of the other, but when they were young, they did not accept that.
“‘There is beauty only in life!’ the Green Goddess would declare, and she would grow her flowers and trees in her sister’s domain, choking out dust and bones.
“‘Life is temporary,’ the Gray Goddess would reply. ‘There is beauty only in the permanence of death.’ And she would rip out her sister’s greenery and turn spring to the depths of winter.
“Now the Green Goddess loved the Violet God, though he did not know it, and the Gray Goddess loved the Ghost God, who stood vigil with her sometimes at graves. The Gray Goddess urged the Green Goddess to tell the Violet God of her feelings, to make him come and stay with her, whatever the cost.
“But when at last the Green Goddess confessed to the Violet God the wish of her heart, he told her with sorrow that his own heart belonged to another, a human. To spare the Green Goddess further pain, the Violet God bid her a kind farewell, and went to his dwelling place on a high mountain, where he could be alone.
“The Green Goddess wept then, an early spring rain, but she did not regret her words to the Violet God, and she found contentment in the work of her hands, the bringing of life, and growth.
“But the Gray Goddess, seeing all this, was terrified to tell the Ghost God of her feelings, lest he leave her in a similar manner. Andso she slew him as he stood with her at a graveside, that she might keep him with her forever.
“But when the Ghost God lay still and cold, the Gray Goddess wept beside him, distraught at what she had done. Her grief shook the foundations of the world. The Green Goddess heard her cries and had compassion for her sister. She knelt beside the Ghost God and sent life into him again. The Gray Goddess rejoiced to be reunited with her love, and from that point on, Gray and Green did not interfere with each other’s powers or wishes ever again.”
We’re quiet for a bit after the story is over.
“And what did the Ghost God think of all of that?” Saga says moodily. She sits close enough to me that I can feel her shaking. “Did he actually love the Gray Goddess? Did he forgive her for killing him? I would think he’d turn his affection to the Green Goddess instead.”
