Happy Friday the Thirteenth! :)
My weekend is pretty booked, so I got done with this chapter early! Finally getting around to answering a few pivotal questions about Saya's history, and the mythos of the Queens. I won't say everything gets explained, as there's still a few more mysteries to solve - but nonetheless, I hope it provides a satisfying (and semi-logical?) pay-off, considering the slatherings of supernatural drama heaped all over this crazy-pie of a fanfic.
Hope y'all enjoy! Review, pretty please!
"What the fuck? That sounds like something straight outta Alien!"
"It was not as entertaining."
"What about the bit where it said her name. Sure it wasn't your imagination?"
"David heard it. So did the staff on-scene. The incident was caught on camera."
"But it actually said... Saya? C'mon. You're pulling my dick."
"I'd sooner have my hand chopped off."
Kai's eyes glint a semaphore of irritated amusement. But, like Haji, he doesn't smile.
Wind gusts across the beach. Overcast today, cumulus clouds drifting over the colorless sky, tingeing the water to the same shade as the snake's blue eyes.
Thinking back on the incident, bewilderment creeps through Haji.
The snake—he recognizes it. It was the same one he and Saya spotted two years ago, at the garden-square of Fuzhou. Not long after the blue roses had erupted around the villa. Not long after Haji had glimpsed the red-haired man with the two-toned eyes—Tórir.
These details fall into place within the substructure of Haji's brain, combining with other facts it has stored. Saya's confession about the dreams. About hearing Diva's voice. About the forewarning from the Yuta. Their isolated, idiosyncratic significance broadens into something more ambiguous and yet more ominous, a supernatural stratosphere hidden from him.
But it is nothing to Haji's concern for Saya.
She'd left the Red Shield outpost with him, so vacant as to seem nearly catatonic. They hadn't spoken during the journey, or when they returned to the villa. Instead she had snatched up her sword, and confined herself to the training room in the basement.
The last Haji had seen, she was going through her kata, so rapid and concentrated she resembled a firework made flesh. He'd watched her run through her routine, staying out of her line of sight. Not that Saya would notice him anyway.
She goes into a completely head-space during her workout.
It is a place she inhabits when preparing for a battle of life versus death.
"Did Red Shield's scientists explain what was going on?" Kai prods. "I mean—how'd a snake get inside that guy in the first place?"
"They are not sure."
"Well, Julia will be back from her conference in the States soon, right? Maybe she can figure it out?"
"Perhaps."
Kai frowns, and aims that frown over the stretch of the sparkling sea. Leaning against his motorbike, there is a restless cant to his posture that Haji has come to recognize. A fighter on red-alert.
More quietly, Kai says, "This toxin. The one in Red Shield's memo. Is it legit?"
"Apparently."
Haji stays expressionless, even as his entire body floods itself with the acrid tide of instinct: to root out the threat, then decimate it. For Sayumi and Sayuri. For Saya. He thinks about Akamine's ruined body. Thinks of that substance anywhere near the three Queens in his guard, and simmers with an unspent urge to find whoever is responsible, and make them pay.
Because David was right about one thing. For such a disaster to manifest, right at their doorstep?
It is a warning.
"Yabuchi Island," Kai says then. "Is that where they picked that guy up from?"
Haji nods.
"Any idea what's happening there?"
"Red Shield has its sightlines on a rice farm. It is private property. We have no channel to investigate it. But—"
"What?"
"Saya wishes to head there. Akamine said something, before he passed. Something about—" Haji breaks off, gaze shading. Inside, he is caught in a tangled space where uncertainty knots with foreboding.
Kai eyes him warily. "What is it?"
"Akamine. He spoke of a girl setting him free. A girl who looked like Saya, but with blue eyes."
"What?" Haji senses Kai's shock before he sees it: a stumbling epithet of heartbeats. The other man's face is palely strained. "Hold on a second. You can't actually believe that."
Haji does not wish to. But that is precisely why he must head to Yabuchi Island. Let his senses reconfirm what has been unchallenged truth for decades: that Diva is dead. Not for his sake, but Saya's. Because he can't bear for his Queen to return to the limbo of her early Awakening, clutching at a glittering clump of Diva's remains in her waking hours while whimpering for Diva's forgiveness in her sleep.
"Haji." Kai sketches a timeout sign in the air. "Diva's long gone. We all know that."
"Her full remains were never recovered after the Met bombing. Only Amshel's."
"That doesn't prove anything. Besides, Saya's blood crystallized her. There's no reset button for that."
Haji wishes it were true. But he has seen strange days, full of disaster and impossibility. For centuries, he'd navigated through life with the knowledge that nothing but a Queen's blood could kill a Chiropteran. The news of this toxin holds an echo both unsettling and profound, a resonance of possibility striking the hidden iceberg neither he nor Saya have discussed since the war.
Her deathwish.
Her unshakable conviction that Chiropterans don't deserve to exist.
What if there are others out there—scientists, military factions, governments—who have been working all these decades with the same goal in mind?
Or is the creation of the toxin even more far-reaching and sinister?
Futile conjecture. He sets it aside. It will do no good to give in to the hot cognition of emotions. Better to be watchful. To gather all the information necessary. Then it is a question of what to do next.
"We must learn what is happening at Yabuchi," Haji says.
Kai nods gravely. "It's worth checking out."
"I want you to keep Sayuri and Sayumi out of it—"
"Bullshit. I've already gotten calls from 'em. They're fired up about storming the island. Might as well make a full-fledged family operation of it."
"We do not know who we are dealing with. IBM-UAWA—or some other faction. Without the proper intel—"
"I've already called Lewis. He's corresponding with a CIA buddy who might have deets."
Haji raise an eyebrow. "That was quick."
"Yeah. Well. It's not my first rodeo." Kai flashes a cheerful tiger of a grin. "I've already had a shady organization fuck with my family once. Not letting it happen again."
Not again.
Of course not. In the early days, Saya and her family lacked the flexibility of mind to grapple with the war. How could they? Saya was suffering from amnesia. Her brothers were civilians. But this time around, they cannot afford the war's casualties. Red Shield is in the nascent stages of stability under August. Yuri is heavily pregnant. Saya is beset by memories not her own. Her Long Sleep is imminent, with her and Haji finally having agreed to circumvent it by starting a family.
Which is why they must establish a measure of control. Otherwise they will always be reacting, always recovering from the latest setback, despite their best efforts to win.
Then Kai asks, "How's she taking all this? Saya, I mean."
All at once, Haji's resolve about keeping the big picture in mind dissolves into uncertainty. How does one answer a question whose currents are still spinning him as he tries to catch on?
"I believe," he says, "she is taking it better than we are."
The moon is a glowing fishhook above the forest. The air is dewy with wafts of petrichor. Petals swirl in colorful eddies in the wind. Blue, red, purple. They flutter across Saya's skin. Tangle in her flying hair.
Laughing, she combs her hands through the strands. The petals shake free in a fragrant tumble, drifting around her bare feet.
Then a hand catches hers. All at once she is in motion, being pulled like the petals in the wind. It should frighten her: she is moving at fantastic speed. Around her, the blurred shadows of forest sweep by. Moonlight is a flickering drift through the breathing trees, lighting her path. Her feet barely touch the mossy floor. She glides as if on hollow bones.
Weightless. Thoughtless. Free.
"Where are we going?" she asks.
A familiar laugh. Like chiming bells and waterfalls.
Diva's laugh.
"You'll see," her sister says.
"Shouldn't we slow down?"
"It's too late for that, big sister."
Exhilarated and disoriented, she lets Diva sweep her along. Everything feels so familiar. The biting whistle of the cold wind. The damp aroma of wet earth and dying leaves. The ghostly bark of silver birches, like parchment mottled with ink. Everything flashes at the periphery of her vision, but her senses are fixed straight ahead, on the dark whip of Diva's hair and the unspooling silk of her laughter.
"Not much further, Saya! Be ready to jump!"
"Jump?"
Then the trees taper into open space: a steep crest of rock barely a hundred yards shy of the forest. It falls sheer, a heartstopping distance down into the deep blue shimmer of lake.
Laughing, Diva swoops straight toward the edge. Instinctively, Saya yanks her twin's hand, but their momentum is unstoppable.
Together, they leap through the air. A giddy lightness grips Saya: it is like a freefall down a skyscraper, a high jump at full speed, a rollercoaster right when the tracks drop away. That eternal instant of tripping heartbeats and sweet emptiness.
Then they aren't flying at all, but floating. Down, down, down, the way the blue petals fluttered earlier at Saya's feet. She stares, still clutching Diva's hand, and finds them both drifting to the widening spread of the lake. The water is the purest blue. As perfectly flat as a mirror.
Their toes hover inches from its surface, never touching. Saya feels the coolness radiating from the water. It is a contrast to the burning heat of Diva's hand in hers.
Her sister giggles. "Isn't this amazing?"
It is amazing. Saya tips her head back to stare at the star-glittering sky, to take deep lungfuls of the air, heavy the undernote of greenery. Carefully, she glides across the gleaming surface of the water, not like an ice-skater but a moon-walker. Boneless. Weightless.
Playfully, Diva catches Saya into a spinning dance. She does so love to show off to her.
"How?" Saya says, gaze riveted to Diva's, "How is this possible?"
"You always ask the wrong questions, big sister."
"What do you mean?"
Diva laughs, a sound that rolls out and out like the wilderness. Pure and endless and beautiful. "That's what I mean."
Saya understands, and doesn't.
Then something is breaking from the water. Dark and sinuous, its body a glitter of black scales. The snake, unfurling with slow grace from the lake, rising into the cool air. Its eyes glow the same shade as the water.
Mesmerizingly blue.
"Diva..." Saya hesitates, edging closer to her twin. "Diva, what...?"
"She's here for you, Saya," Diva says.
"For me?"
Diva lets go of her hand.
"No! Don't!"
It's too late. She hits the surface of the water with an impact like crashing through ice. The shock squeezes her lungs. Her mind pinwheels into panic. Then she is splashing, choking, sinking into the gelid depths. The snake swims closer. Cold scales tangle around her body, pulling her down to the bottom of the lake.
"Diva!" Saya flails wildly, a hand outstretched. "Diva, please!"
Diva only smiles, glowing, indulgent, wistful. "Don't fight it, Saya."
"Please!"
"There's nothing to be afraid of."
Then Saya is drowning, icy water filling her lungs. The snake is wrapped around her, like ivy creeping around a tree-trunk. Its blue eyes burn into hers. And she understands: she isn't drowning at all. She is being submerged, both utterly unprepared and impossibly patient, into memory.
The snake's mouth is opening. She knows it means to bite her. She doesn't resist. She curls her arms around its scaly body, eyes closed, jaw set.
Ready.
Saya opens her eyes.
She sits on the stairs of the turtleback tombs. Moonlight dusts the treetops. The wind engages thousands of leaves in their branches, a swooning susurration. She had zoned out, thoughts whisked into a froth of portent. Nothing she can make sense of, but she's learnt to distinguish her Diva-dreams from the ordinary figments of her psyche. They carry a different texture. A richness of déjà vu.
Except for the snake.
The snake is real. Today, she saw it with her own eyes. The dreamy slither of its body. The sinuous segments of its scales. She'd seen it in dreams for months. She'd known in her marrow that it was real. But that's different from slaying it with her own hands, the tip of her sword smeared with its blood.
She came to the Miyagusuku tombs an hour ago. Not to center her adrenalized body—but to get answers.
The old woman. Auntie Yu.
She knew about the snake.
She called it a messenger.
Saya got the message. A vial nestled in the snake's belly. A vial nearly identical to the one Nathan gave her. Except for its stopper: engraved with the motif of a serpent cording a moon. Inside was a lethal concentrate of liquid. Not snake venom, but aconitine.
Wolfsbane.
Saya stares at a small splotch of dried blood on her palm. A leftover from the snake? She wipes it off on her dress, and breathes deeply.
I need to know what's happening.
I need to protect my family.
It is her first and only thought: pure instinct. Akamine's illness was disquieting. She can't stop thinking of the sores on his torso, scudded with red crystal. Worse is the sense that it wasn't a preview but a history lesson. Like the snake had hijacked the poor man's body, luring him into the city for Saya to find.
A presaging of disaster?
Then she thinks of Akamine's dying words. The blue-eyed girl. Something shimmers in her bones, a complexity of emotion that she is tempted to label as fear. Except its unadulterated brightness is something else completely.
The stirrings of hope.
Saya's hand goes to her necklace. The stone is vibrant red shimmer, shot through with a vein of moonlight.
Diva.
Are you really out there?
It makes no sense. If Diva is alive, then why is Saya having colloquies with her ghost? Was Akamine simply delirious? Was he lying?
Or is something deadlier stirring behind the scenes?
She hears it then—footsteps.
Footsteps presaged by a diagonal slash of shadow. A familiar tenor lilts over the wind.
I see a bad moon a-rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today!
Goosepimples burst across Saya's skin. She spins. "What—what're you doing here?"
Nathan ignores her ostentatiously. His get-up is ostentatious too: the same scarlet-and ivory kimono he'd been decked out in during their early meeting at the villa.
Now Saya sees the bright florets of foxgloves and pale ribbons of snakes with different eyes. A premonition pools in her belly.
Nathan meets her stare and poses demurely. His fingers, red-tipped, snap open an ōgi. He unfurls its translucent pleats in the moonglow like a geisha performing a fan dance.
"Gorgeous, hm?"
"Yes," she says simply, because it is true.
Nathan totters down the stairs on wooden clogs. His toenails are painted the same red, but the feet and calves are gracefully muscled. The whole ensemble somehow calls attention to the statuesque torque of his physiognomy, not a fashion statement but a war cry, secret and strange.
"Tsk. Stop undressing me with your eyes!"
Saya jerks her eyes up to his face, which is alit with smirkish glee.
Was not! she nearly snaps. Instead, she says, "Why are you here?"
"Visiting an old friend."
"Friend?"
Nathan doesn't elaborate. He rearranges the folds of his kimono, perching beside her on the stairs. A pale raft of moonlight seeps through the trees, catching silver motes in his eyelashes. He looks both surreal and relational, a signpost at the crossroads of Saya's memory.
I knew you before, her bones whisper. Oh, I did.
She doesn't meet Nathan's eyes. When she speaks her voice is almost a stranger's, drifting in the dark above their heads.
"I saw a snake today."
"Did you?"
"Not an ordinary snake." The temperature is dropping by degrees. But she barely feels it. "It came out of a man's body. It had a vial in its belly. It spoke my name."
"Saya."
"Yes."
"No." His hands fold together in an elegant interweaving of dark nails and pale skin. "It said Saya. Not your name. Your mother's."
A shockwave judders down Saya's spine. She stares at Nathan. Her initial sense of bewilderment gives way to a subspecies of starvation, so dark it clogs her mind. The whisper in her bones becomes a furor. Tell me tell me tell me...
Nathan doesn't look at her. His profile, downcast, goes unrecognizably still. Brooding.
"Your ancestors were not native to the Froyar. They came to us from across the shores. Dark of hair and dusky of skin, speaking a Proto-Sinitic tongue that could've arisen from the great rivers of East and Southeast Asia. Your mother's name—such a silky, sweet name—meant shadow. A small night. And she was like the night itself: full of secrets and whimsy." He sighs. "Like all royalty, her house bore a coat of arms. A sigil. Hers was the serpent circling the blood moon."
Saya's lungs cramp. She feels like she can barely breathe.
"The Queens' sigil engendered countless mythoi across the ages. Inanna, goddess of fertility and war, riding a great serpent. The nameless Minoan Snake Goddess. The Swedish Snake-Charmer's Stone. Babalon the Scarlet Woman, the Great Mother of Abominations. Then later, once Queens fell from grace, all symbols tied to them were branded transgressive. Evil. Think of the Edenic fall. Of Lilith and the Old Serpent. Of Medusa and her writhing tresses." Nathan's lips twitch sardonically, a bitter aftertaste in the slow nectar of his voice. "In my day, it was different. The serpent and the moon symbolized the undying. The power of fertility and rebirth. Eternity itself."
"The ouroboros biting its tail," Saya whispers.
"Good girl." His bitterness softens into a smile. "For Queens, the serpent and moon were the fusion of opposites. War and peace. Ice and fire. Desire and death. The emblem of the Blodfødt. It has spanned millennia, but I like to think ours was the first invention. Us—or the Egyptians. They were a wily bunch."
Saya frowns. "So why do I keep seeing it?"
"Ah! To understand that, you must understand the Queens!"
Nathan opens his extravagant kimono, revealing an onyx-black juban underneath. He sidles closer, tucking the heavy silk around Saya. The gesture is as companionable as it is confusing.
Then Saya realizes she is shivering. Something is lodged in her bones: dream, dread. The Chevalier's warmth prickles her skin. His scent is like wood sap in her nostrils, faint and familiar.
"The Queens may seem tyrannical monsters," Nathan sighs. "Certainly, their world was excitedly engorged on atrocity and awfulness. But—darling!—isn't the modern world the same? Disasters brew to sustain First World Nations the same as elsewhere—thriving out of sight. Humans kill for riches. For religion. They innovate toys both epic and destructive to safeguard their ideals. They rise to the top of victory, and then come crashing down to depravity, and then up again, and then down again, and on and on until they wipe themselves out." He sniffs disdainfully. "Not so with the Queens, my dove. They neither knew nor cared about money or silly Judeo-Christian value systems. Their sole purview was balance."
"Balance?"
"The law of equivalent exchange! Never take more than one gives." He crooks a finger. "You may fixate on the human sacrifice angle. But for each boy the Queens chose as a Chevalier, they killed the rejects as payment for the gifts they bestowed upon the village. Cofferfuls of gold. Livestock and cloth. Whale-fat and weapons. Soldiers for protection. The Red Queen would declare the territory her demesne—and shield it from pestilence and invasion alike. She would establish laws to keep the peace. Protect women, children and the elderly. Similarly, the Blue Queen would send her handmaids—the Vǫlur—to cure ills with herbs and potions. Women not unlike the yuta of the Ryukyus. They healed the sick and conversed with the spirits, spreading the Queen's arcane arts far and wide. For the Queens—both of them—understood that their lives were infinite, but their empire was not. They would rule only a little while... before the humans grew into their own."
A flare of nostalgia crosses his features, before shading to grimness. "The Queens' rule came at a price. Rape and murder were punishable by death. So was treason. Those found guilty would be executed by the Red Queen herself. The criminal's family would be shunned thereafter, as a reminder to abide by What Is Written." His eyes flick to hers, blue and glittering. "Humanity ought to be grateful. Without the Queens, they would know nothing of warfare or song. Nothing of law, art, science, astronomy. Nothing of magick itself."
Saya squints dubiously. "Magick?"
He raises his eyebrows. "You met a talking snake. You've got no room to squawk."
"But—"
"Hush." The kimono is draped closer around her, warm as the womb. "Listen for once in your life. You might live when this is over."
Saya scowls but says nothing.
"You know of Seiðr," Nathan says. "The Queens' gift of sorcery. It is rooted in your blood. But your blood carries more useful secrets still."
"Secrets?"
"Call it genetic 'memory.' Skills and strengths of Queens, passed down through DNA. The lives of your ancestors may not govern your day-to-day behaviors. But they play a hand in saving your life in moments of danger—through transmitted memories and instincts alike."
Saya thinks of when she fought the mysterious Chevalier in Gokokuji Cemetery. She remembers the moment he'd pinned her against the tree. Some natural mechanism had switched on. A red-tide of nature sharpening her body, transforming her hand into a claw that skewered his eyes out.
She hasn't been able to replicate the attack. Maybe it is only possible in extremis?
"Of course," Nathan says, "genetic memory is only the tip of the dagger."
"What do you mean?"
"Queens have long existed in a state betwixt and between. Neither good nor evil. Similarly, their powers encompass the center of everything, yet also its darkest edges. Among the Blodfødt, telepathy and retro-recognition are common. Queens see the words we do not speak. The lives we once lived. They are also capable of pathworking. Stepping out of their bodies, to hold counsel with their dead kin. Daughters with mothers. Sisters with sisters. We call the place where they convene Niflheimr. A limbo where spirits with unfinished business reside, until their will is done."
Saya's breath falters. A phantom aria races through the chambers of her skull, keeping pace with the rapid throb of her heart.
"Diva," she blurts.
Nathan's face is a sly twist. "So you've done it? Spoken with your sister in dreams?"
Saya shivers, and nods.
"What about your mother? The Blue Queen? Any messages from her?"
Saya wants to leap up. To cover her ears and run off screaming. But there is an icy disconnect between her mind and body.
"I keep having flashes," she whispers. "Of the snake. But also of a far-off place. A woman with two blades. A woman in a tower. Dead babies. Battles. Is that—?"
My mother, she wants to ask.
Nathan's expression dries up the words in her throat. His features somehow distort themselves, the smooth human mask elongating into sharpness. His eyes shrink into glowing red slits, lips curling back to show fangs. He resembles a fox in all but fact, the energy bristling off him a hellish-red.
Saya tries to twist away. But his arm encircles her tighter. It isn't a threat. In a shocky compartment of her mind, Saya understands that her words have pierced the encasing of indifference around Nathan's core.
For once—in eons?—this ancient aberration of a Chevalier is happy.
"So," he says, "it's not one Queen communing with you. It's three."
"Wh-what?"
Nathan's lips curve wistfully. "Just as you had a sister, so did your mother. Hers was the Red Queen. Sunako. A fierce warrior, with a temper to outblaze the sun. She was her sister's equal in every way. Hair like a black cobra coiled around her neck. Lips so red your eyes bled just staring at them. She was wild where your mother was whimsical. For that, she suffered in ways different from your mother. But no less terrible."
"Was she—" Saya wets her lips. "Was she also locked in a tower?"
Nathan shakes his head. "Worse. Her Chevaliers betrayed her, as they did your mother. Upon lapsing into Long Sleep, Sunako was made into a war-weapon. They dragged her from battlefield to battlefield. They fed her blood, and let her go berserk, killing everyone in her path. She suffered greater indignities still. A Queen in hibernation cannot conceive, so her Chevaliers—may Sigyn slit their throats—had no qualms using her for their pleasure. They already had a broodmare for children, you see."
"My mother," Saya whispers.
She shifts in Nathan's embrace, restless with residual memory. The Chevalier lays a warm palm between her shoulderblades. Not comforting her, but keeping her close.
"After your mother passed, Sunako took it upon herself to exact vengeance. To hunt down those who had devastated her family, and the realm itself. Many allied themselves to her cause. Sages. Mages. Midwives. Through a heady brew of sorcery, they conjured a protective talisman. A fylgja—or spirit creature—for our Queen. It served as her gateway to the ancestral otherworld. At the same time, it possessed a physical body, to play her sentinel."
Saya's eyes widen. "The snake."
"That's right." Nathan's gaze makes a slow circuit of the skyline; he centers on the rising moon. "The sigil of Sunako's dynasty. Your dynasty. An emissary from the great beyond. The snake's messages were always prefaced with a name. Saya. A reminder of what Sunako had lost. Her sister, dead and cold in the tomb. The Blodfødt's reign, undone by monsters."
"Monsters?"
"Six brothers." He laughs, and it is a terrible sound. Something beyond conjuring even in nightmares. "Six hefty, hearty, heartless peasants. They were from the sea-village of Gjógv. Hand-chosen by the Vǫlur—no doubt for their prowess with swords and sophistry alike. Three were given to the Red Queen, and three to the Blue. As Chevaliers, they were welcomed into our inner sanctum. And it cost us the empire."
Wind curls silky-cool around Saya's body. The sky is banded with an opalescent sheen, the diffuse moon buoyed by rain-scudded clouds.
In the glow, Nathan's features are muted with memory.
"I repeat: the Queens' world was a wicked one. But it was colorful and colossal, brimful with a wealth of cultures, languages and peoples. All of it erased from the world's collective memory by those self-serving warmongers. From day one, they went to work. Double-rationing discord to sow among humans. Dangling lures of distrust before Chevaliers. Day by day, year by year, they nursed disputes across the land. Destroying an empire is like raising a child, you see. It takes time, and patience, and planning. But once their labor bore fruit—oh."
His eyes fall shut, and the words ache with remembered suffering. "It was like the outbreak of the plague. Bloodier. An apocalypse. Empires sustain themselves on secrecy. The six brothers leaked every secret there was, until the humans were swollen with them. Swollen with their own hubris. They learnt how to anticipate each Queen's weakness. Worse. How to orchestrate her demise."
Saya's jaw aches with the thousand words caught behind her teeth. The tombs are silent around her, as if all their ghosts are intent on Nathan's story.
The Chevalier reaches to pluck a fluffball off his sleeve. When he withdraws his hand, there is a vial caught between his thumb and forefinger. Saya recognizes it as a replica of the one he'd given her at the villa.
Nathan lifts the vial to the moonlight. The pale purple liquid glitters within. He turns it over the way a jeweler might appraise an amethyst.
"You say the snake had a vial in its belly?"
Saya nods.
"Did it look exactly like this?"
She shakes her head. "There was a crest on its stopper. A snake biting its tail, with a moon in the center." The sigil of her ancestors, she realizes. "There was poison inside it. Wolfsbane."
Nathan closes one eye, and stares at the refraction of moonlight inside the vial: soft and filtered, a rippling distortion.
"In those days—these days—wolfsbane was intimately tied to Queens," he says. "Indeed, the crime of veneficium—poisoning—could only be carried out by a veneficia. A sorceress. This, like much else, was mankind's sideswipe on the powers of the Queens. They are credited with inventing the art of poisoning. Especially through use of the Aconitum plant. Queens recorded its power to heal as well as harm. It might also interest you to know that in our tongue, the word gift means poison."
Saya's eyes narrow. "You gave me a smiliar vial as a gift."
"It was intended to be." Nathan tosses the vial into the air. Moments later, Saya feels its cool weight in her pocket. "Wolfsbane, by itself, cannot hurt us. But it becomes a catastrophe or a cure, once mixed with other ingredients."
"Ingredients?"
"Alchemical and necromantical elements. I'll explain those another time." He tents his long red-rimmed fingers and brings them to his lips. "Wolfsbane, for the Blodfødt, symbolized boundaries. Liminalities. It corresponded perfectly with the Queens, who were creatures of otherness. Neither mortal nor mareridt. The plant helped them to move freely between spaces and states. From girlhood to motherhood. From life to death."
Saya feels a familiar chill rising. The moment is like a brokerage of secret, sickening knowledge.
"The six brothers," she whispers. "They told the humans about the wolfsbane. They used the knowledge to wipe the Queens out."
Nathan nods. There is a vacant glint to his eyes, the expression of a man who has lived for years in a cave, and become opiated on his self-imposed exile.
"In mythology, wolfsbane is tied to werewolves and vampires," he says. "For good reason. Like the Queens, such tales deal with liminal beings. Those who exist beyond boundaries. It's also why wolfsbane is considered a talisman. In many places in Europe, villagers nailed the flowers to their doors. A protective ward against the night-folk."
"Against us, you mean."
This earns her a sly smile. "Merciful Magni! She learns at last!" The humor fades. "The first vial I gave you was the Queen's ancient decoction for fertility. To get you gravid with daughters. My second vial contains the same ingredients. It won't harm you—or your little ones—in the least."
"What about the vial the snake was carrying?" Saya asks. "Is it the same?"
"A thousand times no."
"So where did it come from?"
Nathan laughs. That same nightmare laugh that rolls through her like a fire across a rope. It is different this time. Something she can recognize and draw meaning from. Memory gusts like smoke through her skull…
Horses corralled to a copse of old trees. Their two bodies bedded down on cold hard earth. Nathan's arms wrapped around her; his mouth against her nape. Not an ounce of carnality in the touch; they are spooned together for warmth, like nearly every night. She is bone-weary, carrying woe like a pebble in her shoes. He cheers her up with snatches of ballads and inventive twists of swearwords, until a wan smile flickers on her lips.
"We will find him," he tells her. "We will make known his fall to one and all."
"We will." Her fingers tighten around the vial, the moonlight glossing its seal. "Or die trying."
Saya tumbles out of the vision, its surrealism still singing through her bones. A name dances on her tongue like a champagne bubble—then bursts before she can articulate it.
Find him?
Who?
"In the Queen's court," Nathan says, "sages, mages and midwives used wolfsbane in two ways. One was for føða. Birth. The other was for deyði. Death. Queens used the former, diluted in small doses like for the tincture I gifted you, to get pregnant by their Chevaliers. They used the latter, in larger doses, to perform abortions. As your mother did, during her imprisonment. She took the largest dose, in a final act of defiance, for her death."
Saya frowns. "Wasn't she carrying me and Diva? How come the poison didn't affect us?"
Nathan's gaze pins her. She feels his eyes across her body, a scrutiny that isn't sexual, but fascinated in a different way: as if his mind lacks the capacity to understand an oddity such as herself.
"That," he says, "is sorcery even I am not privy to."
The words skate uneasily through Saya. Her hand goes into her pocket. Her fingers clutch at the vial. "And the snake? Why was it carrying wolfsbane?"
"For you."
"Me?"
His face resumes its default smirk. "When Sunako embarked on her journey to destroy the six brothers, she was entrusted with the vial for deyði. Death by wolfsbane. A gift—like the snake itself—from a sage, a mage, and a midwife. It was a last resort against her enemy. By then, Chiropterans were all but extinct. With them died the arcane art of poison-making. The vial Sunako carried was, like her, the last of its kind."
"So," Saya hesitates, "the snake held the vial for safekeeping?"
"In a sense." His eyes hold a far-off glaze. "Sunako was successful at hunting down the six brothers. All but one. The youngest and cleverest."
"Her last Chevalier."
"That's right. Her last—as I am the Blue Queen's last. Her favorite—as I was the Blue Queen's favorite."
Realization trickles in, and Saya's breath shivers out. "She loved him."
"For all the good it did her," Nathan scoffs. "Let it be a lesson, darling. Pick the loyal ones over the thrill-seeking louts. You'll live longer."
"So he killed her?"
"He tried. Many times. But she proved cleverer. For centuries, she chased him across continents. For their final battle, they faced off right here. On Yabuchi Island."
"Yabuchi…"
Saya's throat dries up. Knowledge in red puzzle pieces falls through her, fitting the blank spots. She trembles on the edge of epiphany, the puzzle melting into blood, curdling her senses with songs and slaughter and screams...
The heart of a battle. Unending sheets of rain. Arrows flying left and right. A woman wielding two blades, her nerves a twist of adrenaline, her body knee-deep in corpses stretched across a landscape of snarled trees and jagged-hewn rocks. A solitary shape at the sea-shore, his face half-shadowed. But as lightning splits across the storm-tossed sky, his eyes glow blue…
She closes her eyes, hoping the memories will fade. But they are still there a few seconds later.
"Sunako lost her life in that battle," Nathan says. "The brother, meanwhile, was sealed off in a cave. The serpent was tasked with watching over him. To warn Sunako's closest kin, if he ever escaped."
Saya swallows. "Me."
"That's right. The serpent has been warning you all this time. About the threat to you. To your family. The vial in its belly is also yours. To use against that traitorous Chevalier. To finish what Sunako could not."
Saya breathes. In and out, trying for the old trick of calm. But the thud of her pulse keeps filtering back to her. She jerks out of Nathan's arms and to her feet. Her instincts are at war with one another; her body is in the grip of tremors.
"The snake," she says, "It was inside a man's body. Before he died, he said a girl set him free. A girl who looked like me. Except her eyes were blue."
"Oh?" Nathan offers the blithest of shrugs. "Maybe the shlub was hallucinating."
"That's too specific for a hallucination!"
"And too vague for a confirmation." He brushes it off. "Diva or no Diva, something is brewing. Something cooked up by that traitor Chevalier."
"What is he after?"
"The usual. Disorder. Domination. Daughters."
"Daughters?"
"He is the Red Queen's last Chevalier. Groom to your mother, and her kin. He can beget daughters off you—and use them to craft a hellscape to his liking." His eyes narrow. "Tell me. Where is the deyði vial right now?"
"It's with Red Shield." Saya inhales slowly. "It's being kept in containment."
"See that it remains so." He rises and dusts himself off. "Until the time comes."
"The time?"
"When you use it to kill him."
"Why can't I just use my blood?"
Nathan shakes his head. "Your blood will sicken him. Not slay him. Therein lies the difference between a Queen and her offspring. Her sister's Chevaliers possess… how should I put it? An immunity to their niece's blood." His eyes narrow. "What's more, our traitor has the gift of skala hud. Scaled skin. One of the powers inherited from Sunako. He can harden his body into an exoskeleton that deters bullets or blades."
Saya bites her lip. "Like James Ironside."
"Similar to James—delightful dud that he was—except our traitor is more flexible with his armor. He can wield it whether he is fully transformed, or not. The only way to pierce him is by either immense injury, or…"
"Or?"
"Let it not come to that."
Nathan slips off his kimono. He drapes it around Saya like a blanket. It is a spilling softness, a steadiness of weight. In the moonglow, the embroidery is an incandescent pattern of reds and ivories and blacks. Their shimmer reminds Saya of her visions; each thread finer than cobweb, and yet trapping her inside a thousand scintillas of memory.
Nathan's lips brush her cheek. The small hairs of Saya's nape stand on end. She twists away. "What?"
The Chevalier's eyes are the same color as the kimono. Blood red.
"Use the føða vial tonight," he says. "The fertility tincture. Use it to conceive daughters."
"I can't use it now!"
"Now is the only time. To delay your Long Sleep. To have a layer of safety." His lips twist tauntingly. "Unless you prefer that viper's spawn in your belly."
Saya winces. Somehow, viper is a fitting descriptor. A Chevalier slippery with treachery. Trapped for eons in a cave. Like the habu. She remembers Tórir saying that they could survive for decades on water. Perfect predators, he called them…
Tórir.
Trapped in numb paralysis, Saya remembers their kiss. The magnetism between them was undeniable. Disquieting. Nothing like she feels for Haji: his raven hair and sculpted cheekbones a haunting allure. There is something different about Tórir. A connection both feral and ancient, built on blood and bonemeal.
A primal recognition.
"I crawled out of Hell just for you. I am here to give you a taste."
Saya's heart skips two beats—a tachycardia lapsing into terror. In her mind's eye, she is battling for her life at Gokukuji Cemetery. She is at Makishi Market, talking about vipers and mythology. She is in Karachi, the cool heaviness of a naked body spooning hers. She is sprawled across the highway, staring at a silhouette beyond the car wreck's heat-shimmer. She is in Taipei, spotting the logo of six arrows sunk into a coiled snake. She is at the flower carnival, a rough palm on her neck, a mouth opening against hers like a furnace to scorch out all sense...
"Love is a waiting game. And I am nearly done biding my time."
She thinks of two-toned eyes. Thinks of witticisms and warnings. Catastrophe cloaked in flashing colors.
Red. Blue.
Tórir.
She knows who he is.
As always, I'm eager to know y'all's thoughts on this installment! Was it too much of an info!dump? Was it too heavy-handed or required too much suspension of disbelief? Was the Queens' history too tied in with woo-woo and nu-age blatherings?
Lemme know, and hope y'all have a great weekend! :)