I didn’t grasp His request for forgiveness until He touched me. It was a searing touch against my arm, like hot iron pressed to my skin, but the instinct that told me to jerk away was muted, suppressed. My sense of direction faltered, and there was no up or down, no left or right. And then that touch was everywhere, everywhere, across every particle of my being, and then deep, deep inside me, lighting me like a pyre, scorching and peeling and crumbling.
I think I screamed. I must have. But it’s hard to remember, even now. Neither can I recall the end of it, for after the consummation, there was only darkness.
CHAPTER 4
When the darkness ended, I found myself in another room much like the first two, yet very different. I was surrounded by not-walls and rested on a large not-bed. Everything was tinted crystal and pink. It took me several days to leave my bed and its canopy long enough to notice that even here there was no ceiling, only an endless night sky filled with stars.
I should have been ash. I should have burned to smoke and floated away into the heavens. But I was still me, the strange, crystalline version of me that existed in this place.
It was there in that room, in that bed, when I finally let myself mourn. I cried for Caen. For my love for him, for my sacrifice, for the future and family we would never have. I felt his loss most keenly of all, and though I had chosen this path for him, I anguished over what I had sacrificed.
Second, I mourned for myself. I mourned being alone in a strange place. I mourned my happy, playful self, because I was sure she had been scorched away along with my innocence. I mourned the emptiness of my room, for I had given of myself freely, and yet there was no man or god to lie beside me in bed, to stroke my hair and love me, to cherish me for what we had given each other. I saw no one but the servants—two unfamiliar godlings who gave me pitiful and sympathetic looks as they saw to my physical needs—and they did not speak to me. They did their work and nothing else. I had thought myself alone before, while surrounded by family, but I had never known true loneliness until I became a star mother.
My loneliness led me to mourn my family, however different we were from one another. We had loved one another, in the end. In the days immediately following my consummation with the Sun, I would have given anything to have my sister Pasha scowl at me, or Idlysi argue with me, or to be with my mother, even if she was apathetic to my presence. I thought of the way my father had reacted after I had volunteered, how unexpected his show of emotion had been, and I wept.
After that, I mourned my home. My friends, my forest, all the things that had been familiar to me since infancy. I would never see them again.
I craved company most of all, even the Sun’s company, and yet I feared it all the same. What if His seed didn’t take, and I would have to . . . be with him a second time? I didn’t think I could bear it. The very thought of standing in His presence made my bones shake. Terrible anxiety punctuated by halved and quartered memories made me sick in my mind and my core, yet I felt as if He were some sort of lost limb, one I kept trying desperately to find and flex, only to discover it gone.
And yet my concerns about conceiving quickly abated. It seemed where there was a god, there was a way. By the end of my first week, I felt something unlike anything I’d ever experienced. A warmth inside me that wasn’t my own, a glowing I couldn’t see. I knew immediately, in all my ignorance, that I was pregnant, and that a star had budded to life inside of me. And with that budding came wonder, which turned into purpose, which shifted to hope. And that hope helped illuminate the darkness that had crept over my soul. It helped me return to myself, and I pulled the canopy from my bed so I could see the stars and remember why I was here.
I startled my first attendant when she came in with breakfast, serving me food that was entirely mortal but had a crystalline sheen to it as I did. Perhaps it was a sort of magic that let us exist in a world not meant for our kind. Perhaps this was how we really looked, away from the body of the Earth Mother. The attendant eyed me and set down my tray. Before she could depart, I asked, “What is your name?”
My words had astonished her.
She was an interesting creature, mostly humanoid. Predominantly pink in color, she had the body of a human, but there was no distinct separation between her long, thick neck and her head. Almost like a large thumb extended up from her shoulders, and her eyes, nose, and mouth were painted onto its pad.
It took her a moment before she answered, “Elta.” Her voice harmonized with itself in a way that was mesmerizing.
I smiled. “How long have you been here, Elta?”