The Fae queen re-took her throne and her courtiers began to rouse. One by one they stood, stretching or yawning, and began to wander away from the dais where their queen lounged and the angel in Katya's body sat rigid on the step, waiting. One of the last to awaken was a tall man with silver hair and a hooked nose. Rather than join the silent folk making their way out of the room, he stepped immediately to the bottom of the dais and made a deep bow to his ruler. Anna had not heard a sound from the queen, but now she caught a silken rustling as the Fae behind her gestured.
"Mathias," said the queen, "Kindly escort our guest to the magus' quarters." The silver haired man bowed again and turned ever so slightly to regard the angel. Another rustle, and the queen spoke, just behind Anna's ear. "Tell the magus what you seek. He will know that such as can be done is to be done with my blessing. Once the child has accepted its new vessel and quickened within it, you and I shall have more serious words."
Anna nodded. "Thank you."
Matthias led the angel through the queen's lodgings, a maze of tapestried hallways, closed doorways, and grand staircases, until they reached a stone archway. Winding stairs led up or down into the gloom. He turned to her, and indicated with a wave of his hand that she should go up as he made a perfunctory bow. After a moment, she nodded her head at the servant, and began to ascend.
The only decorations on the circular stair were the ornate silver lamps set just far enough apart that she felt like she was continually searching for the next one around a distant bend. As she passed the fourth lamp, Anna whispered to herself, "I should just take flight, until I reach the top of the stairs." But she didn't. Her senses were not quite attuned to this body, it seemed, making everything a bit off kilter. Even worse, her wings did not yet feel like a true part of her consciousness. The spark that had attached itself to her grace as she flooded and destroyed her vessel, that the angel had curled instinctively around as she forced both herself and the demon into the ether, now fluttered unfixed and unbalanced through her system.
It was amazing to Anna that they had made it this far at all.
At the top of the stairs she found a stout, small wooden door, arched like the entryway below. She only hesitated a moment before knocking. The door silently swung inward, revealing a dark room lit from some dim source above. She stepped in, trying to bring her angelic vision under control long enough to scan the room for living creatures. There was no one.
But then, in the middle of the circular room, a small man appeared. He faced the angel with crossed arms and a glare. "Well?" he said. "What is it this time? More magic strings? You still owe me a song for the last set, you know-"
Anna drew her temporary vessel up into a commanding pose and returned his stare. "Your lady permits your help on my behalf," the angel said. She let her eyes flash blue.
At this, the little man faltered. "You're not Katya."
"No."
He surveyed her. "Someone wearing the queen's lutist? What manner of barbarism-"
Anna halted him with a raised palm. "Your queen gave me permission, and your friend is safely asleep, here with me."
The man shook his head at that, but turned, stumping over to a low curved workbench that occupied most of the far walls of the room. He cleared his throat and without turning around, said, "What's it to be, then? A scrying? A prophecy? You winged folk are forever pestering us for such trivialities, so I can well-"
"A vessel. My vessel." Anna spoke softly.
He let out a barking laugh. "What've you done with it, then? Misplaced it?" He picked up a tool and began tinkering with an array of gears and metal strips laid out on the table.
"It burned."
"He slumped, dropping his tool on the bench. "Should've been more careful."
"Yes. But it was-necessary."
"So-Katya's not good enough for you?"
"I've no wish to keep or hurt her. I can't explain more, except that it is imperative that I return to my own vessel. I do not ask for myself, but you must believe, another's well-being is at stake." Anna approached the bench and the mage turned to her, glaring up into her face. "What is your name, sir?"
"Telgrym," he grumbled.
"Please, Telgrym. You can recreate it. The queen would not have agreed to terms and sent me here if you couldn't." She stopped several feet away, so that he didn't have to crane his neck up at her. "What do you ask of me to make this happen?"
"Blood and bone, sinew and soul," he said, his tone taking on the cadence of a recitation. "Or barring that, a finger or lock of hair would do."
"I'm sorry, I don't have anything left."
"Of course not," he harrumphed. He moved over to a bookstand that stood half hidden behind a screen, and sighed loudly as he turned the pages of a tome that lay open on the top shelf. "I don't suppose you can bring me the bodies or souls of its parents, either."
Anna felt a pang course through at the mention of the Miltons. "Probably not." If pressed she supposed she could retrieve their bodies, but some deep small part of her being rebelled at the thought. And heaven-well, it wasn't exactly safe for her at the moment.
The spark fluttered close to the surface of her grace as it reached her vessel's stomach. It did not feel as strong as before. She put a hand protectively over it, watching Telgrym's eyes follow the gesture. He knit his brows in confusion, then brought his eyes back up to hers. She placed her other hand over the spark and nodded at him, smiling a little as she saw the truth begin to dawn on him.
"Isn't there another way?" She asked. "When she created it, the queen said-"
"You say, the queen herself?" Telgrym slammed shut the tome, and, without waiting for an answer, left the stand to hustle over to another shelf. This one was loaded down with tubes and rolled up pieces of parchment. For several minutes, the room was silent but for the rustling of paper and the mutterings of the small man as he searched through the scrolls.
Finally he sighed, "Ahhhh-" and drew out a small ivory tube that had been sealed at each end with a poured plug of a metal that gave off a scintillating silver-blue gleam as he held it up for her to admire. He tapped it on his chest with some pride. "She doesn't always share her work with me, you know-but this one-cost me something."
He moved to one of his workbenches and lit a brazier, then held one end of the sealed tube over it until the flame flashed green and a drop of molten metal splattered onto the table. The little man set the tube down and, taking up two pairs of tongs, held the tube steady with one as he carefully pried the softened seal from the tube.
Anna took a step forward, intrigued, but Telgrym waved her away from the bench without looking up. He tilted the tube, then, allowing a tightly rolled sheaf of papers to slide into his hand.
"What is it?" the angel asked, but he spared only an annoyed glance before unrolling it and pressing both palms to the papers to flatten them onto the bench. He was soon entranced by the pages.
As the angel watched with crossed arms, the loose spark left her abdomen and travelled freely about the pulse of grace. It made her anxious and irritable, but the mage paid no attention as he poured over the scrolls. Sometimes he touched a line of text and caused it to glow with an orange light. These orange filaments seem to latch onto his fingertips and rise off the paper before absorbing into his hands.
Anna willed herself to stand still without tapping a foot or waving her own fingers in the air to signal that he should hurry up. Her grace flickered around the spark, and Katya's body may have shivered along with it as it perched over her heart. The mage seemed to catch the vessel's movement out of the corner of his eye, for at that moment his head finally shot up and he turned to give the angel a sharp look.
"Your memories." He said.
"What?"
He tapped the papers. "I need them. Your mortal ones, that is."
Anna started, "I don't-"
Telgrym tsked at her, waving his hand for silence. "My lady created a child-more explicitly, an-embryo, I think you might call it. Pure potential, but not much more." He spoke as slowly as if he had to explain the situation to a half-wit. "To complete the body, as it existed more recently, I need a guide. In the absence of flesh and bone, the vessel's memories of growing and living within its flesh, should do." He turned back to the papers and muttered something at them. Anna thought she heard the words, "sufficient sacrifice-"
"How-do you have an enchanted pensieve handy?"
He snorted. "A what? Fool girl-are you not an angel? Can you not deliver them to me?"
"All of them?"
He fixed a glare on her. "As many as you are willing to part with. Consider it your donation. How perfect would you have this new body?"
Anna considered, and then nodded. She gestured for him to approach and she knelt down, sifting through the memories of her old life. When he stood before her, she nodded again without looking up at him. Her fingertips went to his temples as her eyes closed.
The angel felt electricity and icy chill pass through her vessel's fingers as she began to concentrate, passing memories on to the mage.
Looking up at her mother's chin and then past her hair to the blinding sun.
The weightless fear of falling on concrete steps, the blood running down her knee.
Sitting in a metal chair at school until her thighs ached with sitting still, even as her fingers were absorbed in the scissors and the paper. Her tongue behind her teeth.
Her father's laugh. His disappointed sigh, and the despair she felt on hearing it.
Her dog's ruff snuggled against her arm. The ache when he was gone.
The hot flush of Andrew McGee's attention.
Running, Running, Running. Hating that they were being made to run in endless stupid circles, but loving the burning strength in her bones.
The sun heating her hair and skin.
The cold, biting her cheeks.
Her mother's hands holding her own to warm them.
Hitting Jeremy's teeth with her own the first time he tried to kiss her. The scent of grape gum on his breath.
Mike taking her hand, and the prickly grass that stained their skin.
A cacophony in her brain. Music like nothing she'd ever experienced, like a buzz in time to the earth's rotation.
Telgrym grunted and began to pull away, but the angel tightened her grip and kept giving him more, ridding herself of an avalanche of memories.
Her true brothers and sisters, their song ringing in her ears, never ceasing.
Charcoal in her fingers and dusting her palm as she drew the images of the end-times, until they took the blunt scraps of coal away and gave her crayons which she broke in two as she drew and drew-
Two boys standing in front of her in a church attic that was filled with dust. The dry sweet tickling of motes in the back of her throat.
The magus' hands were on hers now.
The leather of his coat pungent, slick and warm-
She opened her eyes. Telgrym's were rolled back in his head and she released him, holding back the fragmented memory of a boy in the dark and how he had gazed up at her as if she could save him.
Her daughter might want to see his face, someday.
The little man staggered backwards, a hand to his temple. "Yes, well-" he stammered. "That will do, I think. Yes-" he stood a bit straighter. "That will do. Perhaps," he glanced around the workroom. "You would like to rest while I work the conjuring?" He indicated the screen that stood opposite the doorway.
I don't sleep," Anna said.
"Then simply sit, my-" he faltered. "Please. I work best with a modicum of privacy."
Anna considered him dispassionately, then nodded once. She walked without speed to the screen, finding a small but comfortable looking bunk and a table with a tumble of notebooks and tomes scattered across its surface.
She sat. She did not look at the books, nor did she attempt to spy on her host. She simple sat while inside her vessel, her grace wrapped itself around the spark, never touching it, a movement both soothing and restrictive.