Page 90 of The Shape of Monsters
They walk through the night, until the moon sets and it is too dark, and Lyric tells Setka aboutWord of Aharté. He tells her about the demon of beauty, too, and finds himself smiling because it was Iriset speaking with him that evening, not Singix, and Lyric wondersif the demon of beauty really knows anything about waste and fertilizer, or if Iriset made it up on a whim to sound more like Singix than herself.
But he can’t let go of the idea that in that moment, Iriset had been honest: She did like the line from Aharté’s words about the lack of waste in balance, in the Holy Design.
Maybe it’s something Iriset appreciates in design, too. A perfectly crafted force array has no waste. It is itself, it uses every charge, every angle, every heat and gravity and slide of flow.
Lyric promised to write to her, and the next time he and Setka stay in a village, he asks if they send letters back to the capital and if he can partake.
The letter he writes starts the wayWord of Ahartéstarts:
“There is no beginning for me…”
In my mother’s tongue
Just after the winter solstice Rabbit walks down from ahz valley to the town at the foot of the mountain. The griffon queen and her two cubs go with ahz, the little ones curious, as most little creatures are, to meet some humans. Rabbit wears a chambered box strapped to ahz back, filled with herbs and fungi that grew high in peaks but nowhere else. The apothecary in town has grown rich in the past years from Rabbit’s gifts, taking the herbs, concocting them, selling them up the road in bigger cities. The town prospered, and everyone in town loves Rabbit, despite ahz reticence and the creepy animals az brings with ahz sometimes. Well, some of them love ahzbecauseof the creepy animals, especially children.
They’ve never seen griffon cubs before, and so even though they have pressing news for Rabbit, it takes quite some time for anyone to bring it up in the face of the adorable spotted griffons pouncing around and flapping downy wings as they “roar” and show off under their mother’s careful eye.
Finally, after the tussling cats have been lifted onto their mother’s back by the scruff and promised fresh sheep’s milk, and after Rabbit hands the chambered box over to the apothecary, Sah’set Zahrah, theunofficial mayor, takes Rabbit’s arm and draws ahz toward the town’s central yard. She pushes ahz onto a bench at the larger of the public houses. “Wait here,” she says, and saunters off. Rabbit sighs softly, under the impression az is about to be proposed to, again.
Sah’set returns with two big cups of beer and a small pink joint to share. Sah’set’s family came here six generations ago following the progress of the Bes and Sarenpet leadership from the east, but preferred the wetter climate this far south to the desert so had not headed for the crater city. They brought their gods and language and a predilection for smoking certain kinds of grass. Rabbit discovered that az shares that predilection ahzself. (Turo the old unicorn who lives with ahz in the valley likes smoking, too, so Rabbit always brings some unrolled back home. If you’ve never seen a high unicorn, well, neither have most people.)
“Ah, so Aneksi will be married next month,” Sah’set begins, and Rabbit appreciates she’s getting right to it. “If you can find some extra of the eagle’s breath, that’s what her mother wants for the decorations. Fresher, the better, but dried will smell as sweet.”
“Congratulations to Aneksi,” Rabbit says, accepting the joint from Sah’set’s pinched fingers.
“I’ll pass it along. She’s marrying the second-most eligible in a hundred miles,” she says with a wink.
Rabbit never flirts back, but it doesn’t stop Sah’set. Rabbit understands she’s considered a good wife—she already has two spouses and that’s hard to maintain—but az knows az’d make a terrible spouse. (“It would mean a lot to everyone if you tied yourself to us,” the older woman argued the first time, five years ago. “I’m tied to the mountain valley,” Rabbit answered, vaguely thinking that because az wasn’t human az couldn’t get married like one.)
When az passes the joint off, Sah’set says, “There’s another one of you.”
The words hit Rabbit like a whole herd of spawning salmon. “What do you mean?”
“A small king caravan passed through last week, with the usual trade and post, but they said a few days before the Night of Chimeras, a star burst in the sky in the middle of the afternoon, lit up the whole crater—and it was people like the Moon-Eater. Another red god, an old friend of your mother’s. They said his name is Lyric Aharté.”
“Lyric Aharté,” Rabbit says slowly. The first word az knows from ahz mother’s language. The second word is familiar, but not known. It must be true, or at least partly true, for a star to fall and it be someone with a name like that. But ahz mother only ever mentioned one other numen: “If you meet another fairy called Never, tell it to come home,” Mother said.
Sah’set leans closer, holding out the joint again. Rabbit takes it in trembling fingers and drinks deep. Dizziness creeps up ahz skull. It always happens when az leaves the valley, though it’s slow here, the disorientation. Not like it had been in the crater city, where some days Rabbit could barely walk due to vertigo and splitting headaches. The grass helps.
The mayor says with quiet intensity, all flirtation gone, “Aharté is the name of an old Sarian god, the Lady of Song, and to the Bes the Lady of Silence.”
Rabbit takes another drag and closes ahz eyes. “Lyricmeans the words of a song in my mother’s tongue.”
“Ah,” Sah’set breathes, a hint of awe present.
Standing, Rabbit gives the grass back. “Thank you. I might be gone for longer than a month, but if you send someone to the gate, Turo will help find the eagle’s breath.”
“Maimeri!” she calls as az strides away, but az doesn’t stop except to find the griffons where they’re clustered on the porch of a two-storied house. The cubs snarl cutely over bowls of milk while thequeen sits in a patch of sun, wings folded regally, and accepts treats of bloody meat from one of the town’s best hunters. Rabbit carefully pushes through the crowd and stops in front of the queen as she delicately licks blood from her whiskers.
Ignoring everyone else, Rabbit says, “I’m going north, not back to the valley today. Tell the foxes to mind and I’ll bring sweets back for Turo if he doesn’t cause trouble.”
The queen griffon inclines her head, huge golden eyes blinking slowly. She says a word in her language that Rabbit knows to meancold. The gathered humans fall into shocked silence, though they can’t understand.
“I’ll be fine,” az promises.
One of the cubs hops over, flinging itself up with a silly flap of wings. It’s unfledged, and Rabbit catches its awkward limbs against ahz chest. Several sickle-sharp claws hook into ahz wrists. It chirps. This is the female, az thinks, and kisses her downy forehead. “I hope you’re flying the next time I see you,” az says, then hands her into the arms of a surprised but willing older man who gets a mouthful of griffon wing.
With that, Rabbit jogs out of town.
