Meagan Spooner

Growing things are the place to look for hope, North. I can hear my grandfather’s voice, echoing between our worlds. No matter what else is happening, the garden is always putting forth a new shoot, readying itself in the certainty that tomorrow will come.

“There will always be another stone,” he says, watching my face intently. “I know Nimh’s was not the first call to destiny that you have answered in your life. Nor will it be the last. You
must choose which stones to carry, for if you try to carry them all, you will be dragged down by their weight and drown in the depths. But you may find that as you swim, you grow stronger for the stones in your pockets. You may find you can carry more than you knew.”

“But I do know that without a road to another world, we find ourselves here, and this is where we must choose our actions.

It is your choice, Last Star of prophecy. No one can force you to carry a stone you didn’t choose. But I do not think anyone else can do it.”

Hey, I tell myself. If you’re alone, then there’s nobody to see you jump at shadows
except the cat, and he’s already judging you.

If you don’t know what’s happening, my bloodmother often says, then your best move is to shut up until someone tells you, rather than revealing your ignorance.

There’s nobody in this world, except the cat, I can trust completely.

Behind my closed eyes I can almost see his face, almost remember him as if I had never lost those memories.

There is no fate, no prophecy, no pantheon of gods that could ever demand such a thing of anyone: to submit to death rather than be touched. To meet the other half of one’s heart
and never feel his kiss. To be promised divinity that transcends humanity, but only for one who lives her life as something less than human.

Enough.

This touch is my own, driven by nothing other than my need of him.

But the moments stretch, and I do not burst into flames—there’s only the gentle warmth of his skin on mine.

He’s waiting too, for me to lift my eyes from our hands, to start breathing again, to show him I am all right. When I meet his gaze, he steps closer, fingers sliding up to circle my wrist until his thumb rests against my quickened pulse. He breathes again, the air gentle as it puffs on my upturned wrist.

“Oh, Nimh.” His voice is a bewildering, tantalizing mix of sadness and longing, as his eyes fall to the place where he’s holding me. “I wanted it to be me too.”

My own breath catches, and for a few heartbeats we stand there, frozen together. His hand tightens around my wrist, just briefly, like a fleeting concession to the desire to hold all of me with such fierceness—and in that moment I find I would quite like to be seized that way.

But then he’s shifting again, his thumb moving across the heel of my hand and then sweeping across my palm, gently uncurling my fingers so that he can place something there with his other hand.

With a flash of recognition, I see that it’s the protection stone I made for him that morning we parted ways atop the cliff near the western mountains, when he believed I meant to destroy the world and I believed he meant to leave it for his own. He’s wrapped it in thread the color of my robes, the color of the sash he wore in my name.

Now, he presses it into my palm and uses both his hands to
curl my fingers around it.

“Don’t give up,” he murmurs, drawing me closer so gently I scarcely notice the step I take that erases that last little distance between us. “I know you think they’ve all abandoned you—that no one believes in you anymore.”

Slowly, almost absently, he rubs his thumb across my knuckles, as if savoring the texture of my skin beneath his. I cannot speak a reply, for he’s stolen my voice—I can only nod, my own heart a confusing tangle of grief and desire.

“I believe in you,” he whispers, raising his eyes from our hands. His mouth curves a little when his eyes meet mine, the half-hidden smile rueful and fond. “I always believed in you. Before I believed in any of the rest of it, I believed in you.”

Then he bows his head and presses his lips to my curled fingers. His mouth is soft on my skin, though his lips are firm as they form the shape of a kiss, draw back, and kiss again, as though he cannot quite help himself.

Techeki’s eyes scan my face, and he tilts his head a little to one side in that habitual gesture of his. “I know you thought of Daoman as something like a father,” he says, voice still quiet. Very carefully, he raises one hand so he can pluck at a lock of hair dangling just by my cheek, so that he can lift it back into place among the rest twisted back into a knot. “But you ought to know that he wasn’t the only one who thought of you as something like a daughter.”