Hurriedly, I removed my shoes and trekked farther inside. The air rippled as water. I felt faint as I passed through it, my hands and the soles of my feet throbbing.
There was no door to block me from the eye—the round lily garden at the center of the cathedral. Only an archway. The garden was burned away to nothing, the grass disintegrated, the flowers charcoal staining my feet. My sweat-drenched clothes stuck to me as a second skin. My pulse thudded beneath my skull. My body grew hollow and rough. I forgot my anguish, distracted by the scorching of my body. Of the marble pillars that glowed with heat ten paces away, standing like sentinels to the lily garden.
I dragged my legs, each heavy as a newly fallen tree. I fell into the ash, the grit sticking to my eyes, no tears left to wash it away. The skin on my lips split and dried as I crawled forward, regret burning up like tares after harvest.
I tried to pray, but my thoughts were on fire.
Take me, oh Sun. Make me star mother. I bow to Thy will.
I collapsed, skin charring and flaking away. I reached one burning hand to the altar. Touched it.
The light blinded me, and I was undone.
CHAPTER 3
And then everything was different.
There was no roaring fire, no blistering heat, no pain. I opened my eyes to a room that was not quite a room, with walls that seemed to stretch out forever on all sides and a bright, empty expanse above me. An enclosure that was there but not quite there. A place like a tapestry, its stitches not yet pulled tight. But it was calm, and the light was tinted a soft, rosy pink.
A luminous section loomed before me on one of those forever walls, like a window into the heart of heaven, and before it stood a man, perfected as though by the hands of a master sculptor, who put me in mind of a bonfire and a lion. He stood by the outpouring of light, or maybe was the outpouring of light, or both. He is so difficult to describe, and even now my language does not have words to do Him justice. But He was there, and He gazed into the brightness as one might gaze into a garden, peaceful and still.
I was . . . not lying down, but neither was I standing. Yet as I moved to right myself, I noticed I was not myself at all, but something else. Something that, like the room and the man, was difficult to describe. Like my skin was made of crystal, glimmering and hard, yet still pliable. I was not clothed, not exactly, but neither was I naked. As though this new, crystalline version of me were a carapace built to my body without emphasizing its subtle details. Unable to interpret them, perhaps.
“Come,” said the being at the window. His voice was masculine, deep, and all encompassing, as though the very room we stood in was His mouth.
I oriented myself and walked toward Him, though I couldn’t feel anything solid beneath my feet. The brightness should have hurt my eyes, but somehow it didn’t. I stood beside Him and looked into His brilliance. His skin was made of flame, and His hair billowed like a lion’s mane. The glory of His face made it hard to distinguish any individual features, but I thought He had a strong brow and nose, and eyes as white gold as the Sun.
The Sun. The Sun.
I thought to prostrate myself, and yet couldn’t remember how.
Lifting a finger, He pointed above Him, where the walls that weren’t walls gave way to open sky. “See there.”
I looked, and the brightness wasn’t mere light anymore, but a vast heaven brighter and more beautiful than any night sky I had ever seen in Endwever. Endless stars stippled a black velvet sky like hosts of angels. Never before had I seen the colors of the stars, but here, in this place, I could—white, red, yellow, even blue. So many colors and sizes, such utter majesty.
I should not have been able to identify where the Sun pointed—it was a simple gesture among millions of stars. And yet I could. An empty spot amidst the many pinpricks of light, spilled like glass beads. A tiny point, vanished.
A grave, an absence.
He was showing me the star that had died, the loss that had prompted Him to seek a means of replacing it. Yet replacement seemed cruel. One does not merely replace a child. Sorrow spun off the Sun as surely as light did. If anything, that was the most tangible thing in this place. I had never before considered that the gods might feel as we did.
“I’m sorry,” I offered, feeling small.
The Sun merely nodded. “It is how the passage of time works. They are not meant to be forever.” And finally He looked at me, His gaze penetrating and absolute in a way that struck both awe and fear into my core. He was the most beautiful and most horrifying creature I had ever laid eyes on. There was an ancientness to His face, and yet, if I were to stitch His likeness into a tapestry, He would not look any older that a man in his midforties. Not that I had the talent to capture the visage of a god, nor the dyes to try.