Page 33 of The Shape of Monsters
They put more items in the center of the sixteen-point diamond, and Iriset studies them all. Some are simple—gems and minerals, especially, she understands for some reason. A feather, a strand of Eliri’s hair, a strip of silk even, ha ha ha, and Iriset gets a feel for them all. Complex, made of so many threads of force and raw elements and various intricate designs she can’t parse yet. Iriset thinks she could spend a year understanding the complicated essence of a bowl of tea.
The Moon-Eater crouches across from the numen, and Eliri across from Iriset in the flow quarter, all of them watching, conversing, asking questions of what Iriset sees. “It doesn’t matter what Iriset sees,” the numen says. “Eliri cansee. Can understand. Sundering is inside Iriset. Not study, not understanding. Irisetdoesit.”
“I need to understand how before I can just do it!” she snaps.
“It has been hours,” Eliri says. “Perhaps a break.”
Iriset gratefully realizes the draining falling force that bows her back, the click of ecstatic in her burning eyes. Yes, she needs a break.
“First,” says the Moon-Eater, “one last study.” He gets up and picks his careful way into the design diamond. With a flourish of hands, he poses in the center. “Me!”
The numen tilts its head thoughtfully, and Eliri says, “Much more complex specimen.”
“Not necessarily,” Iriset says, teasing out of habit, even as she leans in toward the star array, putting her hands on the ecstatic anchor. The Moon-Eater laughs and Iriset closes her eyes, diving back through into the stretch and pull of forces. Her heart beats steadily, her breath scours her throat, her nose, and she reaches for the center.
The Moon-Eater is fireworks, bold and brilliant, thrumming in the middle of the diamond array, his energy zipping and cracking up and down every design thread. Iriset concentrates, tracing the array in her mind, mapping the edges and knots from every angle at once until she slides into the center of it, of him, and she knows the threads of his being the way she knew the raw opal. The Moon-Eater is like everything and nothing, a tangle of forces that refuses to stay still. There is no foundational design, noinner design at all, just a core. Iriset gasps, breaking away. The fifth force churning there. A tiny galaxy of power.
(No wonder generations of the Vertex Seal could never kill the numen.)
Iriset leans back on her hands, head lolled back, heaving deep breaths. There’s no way she can create something like that. Iriset can imagine transforming an opal into obsidian, or sand into diamonds, or a cat’s fur into scales. A bowl of tea into wine. This Moon-Eater’s core is nothing like those things.
But there is one thing it reminds her of: the entire empire.
The Holy Syr unraveled the Moon-Eater into such thin existence and bound him to Holy Design itself—she gave him an inner design based on the rising and falling forces of the stagnant moon, the ecstatic spark of orgasm, the flow of blood from the Vertex Seal. Every year the miran reinforced the connection between the Moon-Eater, the Holy Design, and the mirané people during the ritual of the Vertex Eclipse.
The Moon-Eater became—becomes?—the Holy Design itself. She understands. Irisetknows.
Suddenly the weight of gravity ceases: She’s being held by arms and body against her spine, her hips, shoulders behind her shoulders, a face against her face. The numen whispers, “I have you.”
“Was I the one who did it,” she whispers back.
“Not if I can help it,” the numen says, full of grief.
More than growing things
Lyric spends his morning searching for the alliraptor chimera.
The grounds are quiet, a cool breeze ruffling the leaves and petals of the gardens he finds. Attendants move about with purpose, and a few of the Moon-Eater’s courtiers or guests appear occasionally, angling side-eyes at him, though everyone leaves Lyric be. He turns in a different direction than the one he took yesterday.
He makes his way generally toward where the impact crater is, guessing if the chimera arrived to help him, it might live near there. Though Lyric intends to search quickly, his queasy stomach and the slight humming in his ears slow him down. He can’t complain, though, as the water gardens he finds are exquisite. In his crater city there is not enough water to make such fanciful places, and Lyric can’t help adoring the play of light on water, the shimmering pools filled with strange fish, the looping design-supported water arches and water spirals hanging in the air like chandeliers. He wonders if such designs are possible under Holy Design, or if threads of apostasy weave through it all.
After the water garden, Lyric finds himself in a long corridor of teal vines crawling up and down red-brick walls set with windows—onlythe windows open into alcoves holding tiny miniature landscapes. One has towering peaks like the Cloud Ranges, and real clouds gather around their crags, snow glistens, and they even seem to contain eddies of wind and, if he peers closely enough, tiny soaring kites or vultures. The birds can’t be larger than his smallest fingernail.
The next window holds what must be an ocean. A vast waterscape glittering toward the horizon, but closer it crashes against rocky protrusions too small to be islands. Gulls and cormorants argue over fish leaping from the waves. Through another window he finds a green valley with small cottages and smoke lifting from their chimneys. Horses and sheep dot the fields, and when Lyric makes a sound of surprise, two horses swing their long heads toward him, then they take off in the opposite direction, making tinny little whinnies.
Lyric hears thunder and turns in time to see lightning flash in the window across from him. He dashes over and watches as rain begins to fall over a rolling, vast prairie. Reaching out, he ducks his hand through the window, feels the zing of force, and catches rain in the palm of his hand.
“Amazing,” he murmurs.
“Ah, get your hand out of there,” someone grumbles.
Lyric whirls to find a woman scowling at him. Gray gnarls through her brown hair, most of it pulled back from a broad ruddy face. She has a veillike contraption set over her forehead, the veil flipped up, and thick-looking leather gloves covering her arms past the elbow. In one hand she carries a large bucket, in the other a toolbox.
“I hope I didn’t ruin anything,” he says. Then repeats it in Old Sarenpet.
“Probably no.” She looks at the window. “Likely no. But it’s a bad habit to stick hands in unknowable places in these gardens.”
Lyric grimaces.
