Page 14 of The Tenth Muse

If my kin were still alive, they’d migrated beyond the forest. Beyond the nymphs’ reach. They had heard rumors in their travels throughout the Sacer Empire that the songbirds had gone extinct, hunted in distant lands by the very humans that treasured them.

For many turnings the forest nymphs brought me water, plucked and mashed figs for me to feast upon, and tended to each feather that sprouted from my flesh. But while they cared for me, they never took me in as their own, only visiting as needed until I grew more self-sufficient. Sometimes I didn’t see them at all, only finding baskets of foraged foods from beyond the Caprificus Forest.

With the nymphs’ aid, I survived adolescence, making myself a home within the curled bark’s embrace. I’d climbed its entirety thousands of times. Nourished myself with its shade. My shelter for thirty-and-two turnings.

If only I could fly. Then I could easily see beyond the tree line and easily evade the hunters.

The nymphs waited for my wings to emerge. They tended to me, brushed through the blush-toned feathers that covered my shoulders, and trailed my hips, cascading behind me into a lush tail that swished back and forth along the bark I perched atop. Once I reached full maturity, the nymphs realized what I’d known all along: The wings would never come.

It’d been four turnings since the nymphs had visited, aside from the random basket left while I slept. I doubted they would ever return beyond that. Why would they, when they could go anywhere, see anything, meet anyone?

Sometimes, when I was especially lonely, I’d descend the branches, pluck a ripe fig, and sit by the stream, tossing molted feathers and sending wishes with them along the current.

I wished for companionship. I wished for someone to come. Someone who’d claim me as theirs, becoming as much my shelter as the tree at my back. A person and place I belonged to. Sometimes I wished so hard, I closed my eyes and half expected to find them, but all I found were shadows tucked between trees.

The loneliness was deafening.

Not that I could do much about it. I never left the Caprificus Forest, never explored the rest of the Empire. Without my wings I couldn’t join the nymphs flock when they traveled, and every time I climbed to the top of my tree, scanning the vast canopy of evergreen, plum, and turquoise leaves, I was unable to make out where it ended. What if I was hunted just as my kin had been, like the nymphs had warned me?

I shivered in my perch, clutching a half-eaten fig tightly in my fist.

Every so often a stray passerby would wander through, finding themselves lost by my tree. It broke up the monotony and I always chirped a melody to entice them to linger longer. Those days were my favorite, despite the company always being brief.

One day, two navy-clad men arrived dressed in finery unlike anything I’d ever seen. One held a cream-colored scroll, unrolling it until I saw black letters scrawled across the front. Having never been taught to read I leapt to a lower branch and asked for them to tell me what it said. The shorter man read it aloud.

“We’ve come to invite you to the Divine Palace. Our great Emperor has heard of the rarity that dwells in the Caprificus Forest and wishes to see you for himself.” His voice boomed so loudly that it sent the small tree warblings skittering away from neighboring branches.

“Why doesn’t he just come here?” I asked, hanging upside down from my feathered tail.

“The Emperor is unable to travel,” said the taller one.

“He has heard stories of your majesty,” the other man added.

I swept my gaze down my body, ruffling my feathers. “I do not wish to disappoint the Emperor but I do not have wings. I’ve never had them.”

“You are no less beautiful, great splendor. Besides, the Emperor doesn’t wish to see your wings. He wishes to see your talents.” The other man held out a necklace of fat opals and rich sapphires, gems the nymphs had only ever described to me. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

He wishes to see your talents.

There was one thing splendors were known for. It was the reason the nymphs suspected we’d been hunted, why my kin had left me and fled to safety.

One piece of lore the nymphs had shared with me, something that seemed more like a wishful myth until now.

While not every splendor was born with wings, we were all born with a song.

one

. . .

The Divine Palacewas grander than anything I could have imagined. Murals lined the walls depicting centuries of battles and betrothals, shipwrecks, and scantily clad people depicted in thick streaks of blue and gold paint. The gold winked under the chandeliers above. Each one hung eight paces from the next, leading toward the Emperor’s throne room.

Whispers flowed like a stream through the gaping hallways, eyes pinned to us as we walked down the hall. Their gowns pooled and trailed the floor in shades of the night sky, of trees and moss. A few were in blushes or ravishing reds, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. The nymphs’ stories hadn’t done the humans justice.

The valley of my spine ached, legs feeling tight and stiff, unable to climb and move as I pleased. I’d been forewarned by the guards that I needed to remain on two feet when in the presence of guests and royalty. I sat back on my haunches upon our arrival, wanting to touch the ground and feel each sleek tile beneath my palms. I missed that connection as my bare feet trudged beneath me, the weight distributed uncomfortably.

Fortunately, this was all temporary.

It had taken us a four hour walk and then two evenings’ tides to get to the Divine Palace. That the Emperor’s guards had come so far to summon me was cause enough to accept my invitation. It wasn’t as if I had anything better to do alone in my fig tree. But oh, how I missed my forest home. Despite the loneliness there, now it was a sea away and I was engulfed in the waves of whispers crashing over me.

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