Page 22 of The Shape of Monsters
Sweat tickles his spine, under his arms, as Lyric does nothing but struggle to stand and hold the Moon-Eater’s gaze.
Slowly, very slowly, life returns to those mirané-red eyes, like flecks of blood sparking one at a time, and his cheeks shift as if in preparation for a smile, and then the Moon-Eater relaxes his shoulders into the slouch of the indolent teen he’s portraying. “My, my, what a gambling face you have,” he says, and clicks his tongue.
Lyric swallows. He does not lose his own tension.
“I don’t mind knowing, Lyric Aharté. It sounds interesting, in the future. Knowing I’m defeated.” The Moon-Eater claps a hand on Lyric’s shoulder, and Lyric jumps. The Moon-Eater laughs, light and merry. He’s shorter than Lyric in this adolescent form, arm stretched to reach. “It’s true. I didn’t know I could be defeated, even if that’s really what happens. Because to be honest, I don’t think Never actually knows. Because hewasn’t here.” The latter is said snidely, too angry to be a pout.
“You didn’t already stop her?” Lyric whispers, unable to summon a real voice through his tight throat.
“Stop who? Oh, your wife? No! I could, obviously, it’s too easy to kill humans. But”—and here the Moon-Eater slides his hand down to grasp Lyric’s elbow—“I want to know more about sundering, this magic she can supposedly do.”
“She won’t want to hurt you anyway,” Lyric manages, allowing the Moon-Eater to escort him away from the water feature. “So you shouldn’t hurt her.”
“Cute,” the Moon-Eater says. “What about you?”
“I… It doesn’t matter what I want. I can’t do what Iriset can do.”
“Oh? And she wouldn’t hurt meforyou?”
Lyric lowers his eyes. “No.”
The Moon-Eater draws them to a stop and touches Lyric’s chin, raising his face. “So pretty, so well made. Well, I think we should ask Iriset what she would and wouldn’t do for you. She’s waiting with Never for us to return, so we can all eat.”
“Do you eat?” Lyric asks tentatively. He is a little lightheaded again.
“Everything needs fuel,” the Moon-Eater answers mysteriously. He hums a little while he walks, reaching up to knock his fingers against the bell-flowers, so they leave a wake of tinkling behind them. In the next garden he holds out a hand and summons a butterfly seemingly built of golden thread to perch briefly upon a knuckle. The Moon-Eater coos.
The beauty is easy to appreciate, though it settles like a sharp rock in Lyric’s chest. Under the marriage knot. The Moon-Eater asks no more questions, so Lyric tries again. “How long have you known the numen who came with us?”
“We were born together,” the Moon-Eater answers idly. “Made together.”
“By Aharté?”
The Moon-Eater slides Lyric a look. “Like you? Why would she make something like you if she could make something like me first?”
“You called me perfectly designed. Does that mean you are, too?”
“Hmm.” The Moon-Eater tilts his head, swinging his hair over a shoulder like a thick horse-tail whip.
“My people,” Lyric says slowly, “are made by Aharté, in her Holy Design, in balance. I do not know if perfection exists in material reality, or only in concept.”
“Oh, perfection exists. Maybe not in humanity. And you feel human enough. Merely… pulled into exacting shape. Cooked to a specific, elaborate mold. Maybe you taste like a good cookie, too.” The Moon-Eater laughs at his own joke.
“Silence,” Lyric says suddenly. He can’t help taking this conversation seriously, though the Moon-Eater seems only to humor him.
“Are you shushing me?” the red god prompts.
“The moment of absolute Silence, Aharté’s Holy Design, is perfection. I can experience it, but it’s difficult to hold on to, maybe impossible. A moment, a thought, a breath.” Lyric remembers explaining this to Singix. She understood so swiftly, so well. No wonder. “Noise, forces, emotions, all states, everything stills in a crystal moment. Even in the most impossible storm, it’s Silence.”
“And it’s something to strive for?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t stagnate?”
Lyric frowns, steps slowing, taking solace in philosophy. “It can’t. Maybe something like you, if you could hold in Silence, if your skills are such, your talents, maybe it would, but I can’t. We can’t. Forces move. Energy moves. Changes.”
He’s thinking of the silver-pink moon of Aharté that in his time does not move, and it holds the Moon-Eater in stasis, if Iriset is to be believed.
