One day, after the pilgrims had been on the island long enough to revitalize the villages and build more of their own, a girl came up to the courtyard of the Fount, all curiosity and big eyes.
“You’re a goddess,” she said simply. “And you’re waiting.”
“I am,” she replied. There was no reason to quibble over it. She knew what she’d become.
The girl cautiously came closer. Sat on the broken tiles in front of the Fount. Lore had never repaired them, never repaired the cathedral. There were some paths whose ruin needed minding.
“My great-grandmother knew you,” the girl said. “Rosie. You were on the Burnt Isles together, before the Liberation.”
Rosie, who’d covered for her that night when she and Dani met Raihan. Such a small thing, a tiny moment in her too-long string of them, but Lore remembered, and she smiled. “I remember Rosie.”
The girl smiled back, small and trepidatious but genuine. “Will you tell me the story? I’ve read it,” she hedged. “Everyone on the island has read the Book of Waiting.”
So that’s what they called it.
“But I would like to hear it from you,” the girl continued. “The whole story.”
And Lore told her.
The Fount listened, and churned, and thought.
200–300 AFA
The tradition started there. Every one hundred years, the people on the islands would pick a girl, usually young, and send her up to the Fount and Its guardian, to ask the story and write down the truth. A truth that had already been written, many times over. But honesty needed renewing all the time. History needed a recounting.
The Goddess of Waiting knew it wasn’t necessarily an accurate way to get a picture of the world, but everyone they sent was infallibly kind. The villagers took care of one another. No one ever went cold or hungry.
The goddess told the same story every time someone came. It became the way in which she counted time, this century-marking storytelling. It reminded her of who she had been, as her unnaturally long life and proximity to magic changed her—not utterly, not like when she held the world’s soul, but she didn’t look human anymore. Her hands were seamed like the Fount’s stones to the elbow, her skin cracked rock with gold waiting beneath. Her eyes shone gentle light.
The goddess remembered what she looked like when she used to channel Mortem. The white eyes and black veins. She wasn’t sure which version of herself she preferred.
Every time she told the story, the Fount listened as if it were the first time.
300–400 AFA
She told the story for the fourth time. It was nearly rote at this point, but for this telling, she let herself feel it all. Her eyes pricked with tears, and when the story was done, she bowed in on herself and sobbed.
Oh, little goddess, the Fount murmured.We are sorry, We are sorry.
The girl they’d sent to hear the story stood carefully, approached as if the goddess were a loaded gun. She put her hand on her shoulder. “How much longer do you have to wait?”
“One hundred years,” the goddess said, and the weight of every single one of them settled so heavy.
The girl’s hand trembled on her shoulder. “You should rest,” she said quietly. “You’re almost done.”
She hadn’t slept since she made her bargain with the Fount. Her body didn’t need it. Every day melted into the next, sunset to sunrise again, and she’d watched them all.
But the girl was right. She did need rest. It was almost done, almost finished, and she was so tired.
The goddess stood when the girl was gone.
Go on, the Fount whispered, like a mother sending a sleepy child to bed.We’ll wake you if We need you.
She went to the cave where the god before her had waited. The irony was not lost.
You’ve done well, the Fount soothed.Guarding Us all these centuries.
She smiled listlessly at the ceiling, tear tracks drying salty on her cheeks. “And have You learned anything?”
