Page 127 of A Frozen Pyre
She didn’t want to remember. She wanted to forget.
Ophir paused in the hall where the stones discolored.
An oil painting had hung on this wall for three hundred years. The sun had begun to bleach the wall around it until she’d shredded it in a rage. She stood in the buttery pool of orange torchlight and fixated on the bleached discoloration, feeling something click as the mechanisms of a lock whirred in her mind. This space had been reserved for a portrait of Caris. She’d manifested one nearly identical to the honorific commission that had hung in the hall in Aubade following her sister’s murder. The perfect, angelic princess’s golden hair had hung loosely at her shoulders; her dress had been the beautiful cherry-blossom tone of spring.
Ophir twisted her fingers to watch another portrait come into existence in her hand, crafted from the very air around her. She had less trouble creating that which already existed,as replication required neither soul nor imagination. She hung it on the same mounts that had lofted the portrait for centuries prior, taking a step back to admire it. Caris’s gentle jawline, her rosy cheeks, the sweet, upward slope of her nose were exactly the way they’d always been. The portrait was perfect.
As she stared at her sister’s memory, she knew why her creatures had been abominations.
Perhaps the problem was that she was trying to invent something new, when what she needed to do was re-create. Her closest successes had been her fumbled compass, her monstrous horse, her vague hound. If ever she was to make something that wasn’t a nightmare, it would come from something true.
***
“Go play, Sedit.” She gave her pet a push toward the woods. Maybe he’d find a rabbit to slaughter. “If I do this right, I might not need you today.”
There was a slight chill on the wind today, but she didn’t mind. Ophir wrapped her cloak around her and enjoyed the scent of the forest as she stilled her mind. She waved her hands, and two palm-sized portraits appeared. Tyr and Caris were small and perfect as their captured likenesses stared back at her from the miniature canvases. She set them down next to her on the grass and knelt. Today, she would not create. She would recapture.
She focused first on Caris.
Not her perfect sister’s blue eyes, her golden hair, or her physical features. She thought of the very spirit her manifestations had lacked and meditated on what had knitted the eldest princess together on her innermost level. Caris had been sweet. She had been soft-spoken, likable, and had smiled so easily. She had been beautiful, yes, but she had been driven by a desire for unity. Her life had been motivated by a desire for a borderless world. Caris had dedicated her life to the visionof a kingdom stitched together from shards of prejudice and inequality. There were so many complexities, nuances, and intricacies to crafting a soul. If she were to borrow a spirit, it needed to be that of the perfect, belated Caris.
Ophir held out her hand before her, closing her eyes as she felt a soul begin to take shape. She gave it purpose. She offered it reason, personality, and drive. She fed it with knowledge, family, and strength. Ophir had lived for one thousand years and still hadn’t forgotten what had separated Caris from those around her. She had been flawless.
Ophir’s eyes opened as she stared at the portrait of Tyr she’d brought with her.
She didn’t think she could survive if she stared into his face every day, but nor could her heart tolerate the pain of seeing an eerie replication of who should have been Caris but wasn’t. Instead, she’d make for herself something new: a sister, a daughter, a friend. She pictured Caris’s sapphire irises and Tyr’s ink-black hair. She envisioned the gilded skin of the man who had left her, but the shoulders, the arms, the stomach and legs of the sister she’d lost. A shape began to stitch around the soul, bones and muscles and tissues sewing themselves in swirls around the blue center of the soul.
Ophir closed her eyes as she pushed the final ingredient into the creature as it manifested: a mind. It would need memories, information, language. Though she could not create a perfect history for the creature, she instilled within it the ability to generate the memories it would need to fill in essential blanks and craft a life in its wholeness. She’d spent the night creating a beautiful story for her companion, her ward, her child.
With a gust of air, Ophir blew the shape into the pit and squeezed her eyes together more tightly. She gripped handfuls of grass and prayed to a goddess that she didn’t believe in while she waited for the screams. There were always screams.
No sound came.
Ophir opened her eyes to see a dark-haired womanscrambling backward toward the edge of the pit. Soil, hands, and limbs pressed into the earth as she clawed at the dirt, eyes darting to take in her surroundings. Grime covered her body, hair blanketing her naked shape. Her eyes were wide with confusion.
Ophir begged speech to come to her. She hadn’t spoken to a person in so long. She knew she was only moments from disappointment. In a second, the creation would start screaming. It would be mindless, soulless, and as broken as every other monster she’d created. Tinged with desperation, she offered a single, “Hello?”
The dark-haired woman blinked up at her. “Where the hell am I?”
Ophir almost choked. Her breath caught in her throat as she clawed to the edge of the pit, nearly tripped over herself as she tumbled down into it. She had lost all sense of coordination in her panicked excitement. She took off her cloak and immediately began trying to shelter the woman, wrapping her in the cloak. The woman was too bewildered to fight her.
“Where am I?” she asked again.
“Let’s get you inside.” Ophir waved her hand and made a ladder. She led the way up, offering her hand to help the girl to her feet. The young woman, still exposed and covered in the muck of the pit, followed her across the lawn. She looked around with so much panic, so much confusion.
She’d granted the woman Caris’s motives, her drives, her charisma, and her winsome spirit. She’d failed to prepare the creation for the enormous redwoods, the empty forests, or the excited vageth who leaped and bounded around their lawn. Ophir wasn’t sure where the new fae’s ability to generate the memories required for wholeness would start or stop, and the woman was understandably terrified.
“Keres!” Ophir shouted as they crossed the threshold. “Please clean the guest room!” The shuffling noises of her half-formed servant moved throughout the corridors as they bustled past too quickly for the newcomer to see.
She had her arms around the dark-haired fae as she led her to her personal bedchambers. Ophir moved them past the rug, bed, and dresser into the adjoining bathing room. She snapped warm, soapy bathwater into existence, thick with the perfumed, spring-like scents of the gardenias and blossoms she had loved so much on her sister. The woman had apparently been effectively instilled with enough wherewithal to understand bathing and the basics of self-care, but the panic had not left her.
“How did I get here? Where are my clothes? Why—” the woman asked, teeth chattering. Her trembles were most likely a byproduct of shock.
“Here, here.” Ophir gestured to the water. “You fell and hit your head. Let’s get you cleaned up and see if you have any wounds.” She took the cloak from around the young fae woman’s shoulders and offered a stabilizing hand as the girl moved into the bath. Ophir couldn’t stop staring at her. She’d created someone perfect. She’d manifested a beautiful, intelligent, complete fae.
The woman stepped into the water but was shivering despite its warmth. Her hands rose to cover her nakedness even beneath the soapy waters.
“I don’t—” She looked around the confines of the bathing room like a caged animal. “I don’t remember how I got here. I don’t… I don’t remember my name.”
