Page 114 of Anomalies

The crowd hushes as Pa shuffles past the mass of people. It’s dark enough that the fireflies have come out, and they blink randomly through the space, clinging to the long blades of grass. We’re in the thick of summer, the night air is still brutally muggy, but there is a light breeze that I’m sure everyone is thankful for.

Pa’s shaky voice projects into the clearing. “What a beautiful night we’ve been blessed with.”

Every story starts the same way, it has since I was a child, beginning with gratitude for a beautiful night, even if it’s storming or frigid. The sky could be burning, and Pa would call attention to its beauty.

He clears his throat, and Kimber whispers something to Lucina that causes her brows to furrow. “Tonight, I have been called on to tell you…a love story.”

The crowd bristles, and Pax snickers again, but I don’t give attention to his torment. Gemma catches me staring and rolls her eyes. I don’t give attention to that either. I do, however, give attention to the way Lucina takes a hefty swig of her drink, her throat moving as she swallows.

Pa rests both palms on the top of his wooden cane. “No one talks about the third planet. Why children? Do you fear it?” Silence. He continues, “Pyra is nothing to fear, it is repentance.”

I remember the first time I heard this story, I was eleven years old. It was one of the few he told growing up that gave me nightmares.

“It is where you atone, should your soul be rotten to its very core, but the planet isn’t what you should fear, nor is the Matron herself. But you’d be a fool,” Pa spins, the hint of a sinister smirk on his wrinkled face, “a wretched fool, to not fear the Hound.”

There’s a shift in the breeze, and many people in the crowd bristle. I don’t blame them; few are brave enough to say his name. And Pa is one of the few.

“He is the underbelly, the bloodstained tyrant, a god given life by Pyra herself to tame and condemn. To punish and enforce. He is the dealer of hell, death incarnate, but—” He pauses, surveying the crowd as any good storyteller would, a glimmer of mischief in his eye. “The Hound is a hunter; there isn’t a thing in the Chiaros he can’t track down, life, death, fury, anguish. He can smell it in the dirt, on any land. If he’s been set after you, there isn’t a corner of this world you can hide in.”

Children gasp, those who were allowed to attend the reading of his story tonight, and the nostalgia hits me like a familiar smell or face. I remember that intrigue and curiosity, the fear that comes with it, back when I still had the imagination of a child⁠—

When I look at Lucina, the rest of the crowd fades away. Her eyes are sparkling, with a faint crease between her brows and a curious tilt of her head. That’s it, that’s the face. She’s right where Pa wants her, all her attention drawn as if she’s one of the children in the front row, leaning so far out of their seat I fear they might fall. It’s innocent enough that I’m rendered speechless, barely able to tune back into Pa’s story.

“But you see, children, the Hound possessed a skill that our original disciples so desperately needed when Rogues cursed them to madness. They were running out of time, and for the first time in her immortal life, Etis Van Reenan was afraid.”

Lucina’s grip on her jar tightens; I can see the white on her knuckles from here.

“The idea came to her one night when she’d exhausted all others; if there was anyone on this planet, in this universe, that could find a cure, it would be the god we were taught to fear. So Etis went out, and she summoned the Hound.” Pa wraps his fingers along the cane and shrugs solemnly. “But doing so would cost her.”

I’d always hated this part; I wonder if Lucina will, too.

“Etis struck a deal with him and told no one. A choice between her and her people was no choice at all, really.” Lucina’s face doesn’t crumble in frustration, not like mine did when I was just another child in the first row. Instead, her brows dip with sympathy, as if she understands such a sacrifice.

“The ground quaked and the oceans trembled the day the Hound arrived on Vita,” Pa continues. “There was a ripple through the grass, a hum to the land that had never existed before, as if the planet itself sensed the evil that landed upon it.”

“It was before the Palace gates that Etis Van Reenan gathered all the Solian Disciples. She looked at her brothers and sisters, at the black veins splintered around their once star-flecked eyes. To the madness brewing there like a parasite. Etis had it too, an infection that would destroy them if they didn’t act fast. She couldn’t accept such a fate.”

“She looked them each in the eye, ignoring the distant rumble of the mountains, and she said, ‘I have sold my soul to find a cure. It is done.” Across the crowd, people mouth the words as if they’re reciting lines from a prayer. Etis’s prayer. “And then she said, ‘What good is this life without my sanity? What good are any of you without your starlit minds? It will be an honor to die unhonored, if it means our people can keep on burning.” Pa makes a half circle in the dirt, his worn eyes squinting out over the hushed crowd. “And then Etis went to meet the Hound.”

Lucina’s eyes dip to her glass, and I see Kimber watch her curiously. We’ve all heard this story hundreds of times, but it never gets easier to hear.

“When Etis returned to Streatham, a year had passed, and there was no light left in her skin. She’d brought nothing back with her, no answers, no cure; she was nothing but a hollow shell, dark thoughts creeping through her once brilliant mind. The other disciples were teetering on the edge of oblivion, the curse having ripped holes in their chests, poisoning their hearts. The madness had wreaked havoc on her body and it had been a waste, all of it, the selling of her soul, the bargaining for a cure…And yet⁠—"

The crowd falls eerily silent, waiting for Pa’s next words. “In her final address to the Solian people, hours before they’d lock themselves away in their immortal tombs, Etis flashed her brightest smile, her gold skin ashen, and she said with the strength of a god, ‘I have nothing left to sacrifice. My mind isn’t mine anymore, and neither is my soul, but you are mine. All of you. For as long as I live. There isn’t any world in which I’d relinquish the part of myself that loves you.” Pa tilts his head to the sky, and all of Pirn recites her final words with him. “Even in death, even in madness.”

Lucina stares off, completely enraptured.

Pa’s strong yet hoarse voice is the only sound aside from the crickets. “It wasn’t fear that ruled her the day she summoned the Hound, or the day she returned home with nothing. It wasn’t courage, or bravery—it was love. Love for all of you.”

He ran a bony hand through his grey beard as if he was reminiscing, then he turned, locking his weary eyes on his granddaughter, but Kimber still watched Lucina.

“Do you hear it?” Pa says, and ears strain against the soft breeze and the quiet song of the crickets. “The thump in the earth, the sway of the tree roots…they’re alive, our fearless disciples, and these are their beating hearts.”

His words barely finish ringing throughout the space when he nods to the Dianic coven. Delia, Laverna, and Ceres raise their hands over the golden fire pit.

“Tonight, my children, let us dance and sing loud enough for them to hear us.”

With that, the sky goes dark, and the full moon dims as Delia, Laverna, and Ceres cast fire into the pit. Everything comes to life: the crowd, the music, the cheers, and the moonshine. All of it is electrified and even without a drop of the magic-bound liquid, there is a ravaged beat to my heart and a singe of heat up and down my skin. I’d spent myself almost entirely over the last three weeks, but magic was replenishing, like a river of gold being poured down my throat.