Page 91 of Flame and Sparrow

“Only a little older than me, but yes,” said Mairu. “Hard to believe based on the way he acts, isn’t it? I think he stopped maturing the instant he became a god.” Despite the insult, the fondness in her tone was apparent—a fondness I’d never heard her use when he was within earshot.

“You two seem close,” I commented.

She snorted at this, but her eyes had turned glassy, distant with thought. “I owe him…a lot. My very existence, I suppose. Though he’ll insist he did nothing for me if you ask.”

I didn’t want to pry, to get anymore involved in their world than I already was, but I couldn’t help my curiosity. “What happened?”

She sighed. Hesitated. Then she said, “I suppose I owe you some truth after deceiving you with my appearance the other day, don’t I?”

“That only seems fair.”

“It’s not a particularly happy story. Might ruin our celebratory mood.”

“I’m sure I’ve heard worse. And I’m not truly in a celebratory mood, in case you haven’t noticed.”

A side of her mouth quirked at this last part, but then quickly fell as she stood and walked to the full-length mirror in the corner of the room, studying her reflection as she spoke.

“My family was certainly not royalty,” she began after a pause. “We barely scraped by for most of my life, and then my father became very ill shortly after my nineteenth birthday. Him and dozens of others in the village where we lived—so many that my mother ended up turning our home into an extension of the town’s overwhelmed medical clinic.

“I helped her at this clinic, and together we found a treatment that was effective for the illness plaguing most of them. But winter was harsh that year, and the supplies were few, so I left one evening with the intention of braving the forest to find more in the towns beyond. I got lost trying to evade a pack of hungry wolves.”

She had to stop and take several deep breaths before continuing. “I should have died that night. The last thing I remember was falling asleep in the snow, leaning against the base of a tree I’d been too tired to climb, listening to the sound of howling wolves drawing closer and closer.”

A coldness settled deep in my chest, making it hard to take a breath, as though I was buried in that snow alongside her.

“I woke up and the snow around me was gone. As was the cold, the wolves…all of it. There were flowers everywhere instead—the very flowers we’d been using as part of our treatment. I’d dreamt of a man planting those shining white blossoms during the long night, and I thought I’d made him up…but once I found the strength to stand and walk out of the woods, I saw him again. Not a dream, but a true, solid god, accompanied by the higher being he served.”

“The God of the Shade was actually there as well?”

She nodded. “He had apparently been searching for a fourth Marr to round out his court of servants, and for whatever reason, the middle-god of Winter and Rebirth led him to me.”

“So there was no Serpent Goddess before you?”

“Correct; I am the first of my order.”

“Did you have to go through trials like I am?”

“Something like that, except I had to prove my worth to the three Creators, not to any of the other Marr. And once I’d done that, I ascended, and I became the goddess over the very thing I felt like I’d never had in my mortal life.”

“Control.”

“Yes. And change.” I watched as she pointed her hand at the mirror. A single twist of her wrist, and her reflection changed into an entirely different being—a young child with a gap-toothed smile and a head full of long, swinging braids—though her actual body remained the same for the moment; only the one in the mirror changed.

“People often overlook my power in favor of the brighter, bolder abilities of the rest of my court,” she said. “But the ability to change things is a magic more potent than any other, I believe.”

I sat in silence, thinking of her court and its magic and wondering at the history between them. The easy, almost familial way the three of them interacted was…unexpected. She’d disguised herself and spied on me on Dravyn’s behalf, and though I still had not forgiven her for that, it occurred to me now that I would have done the same thing for Andrel or Cillian if I’d been in a similar situation with her abilities.

“I’ve never really considered the reasons behind why humans become gods, I guess,” I commented.

This was a lie; Ihadconsidered them—I’d just come to the conclusion that all of them had to have been selfish, destructive, power-hungry reasons.

“We all have our stories.” She slowly waved her hand at her reflection, and it once more became her own. Glancing over her shoulder at me, she asked, “I don’t suppose Dravyn has told you his?”

I shook my head, my eyes drifting toward the shelf beside my bed. The glass sparrow Dravyn had given me—my good luck charm—perched upon it, right next to the crown I’d pulled from the Star Goddess’s sky.

“Give him time,” Mairu said.

Time.

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