Chapter Nine
Jafir
She knelt behind me, her hands covering my eyes. “Don’t look.”
“I’m keeping them shut,” I promised as I reached up and brought one of her hands down to my lips.
“Jafir, pay attention,” she said tugging her hand away. I turned and pulled her down on top of me, drawing her face to mine, kissing her, whispering between breaths, “You are all I need to taste.”
She smiled, tracing a line around my mouth. “But one day you will be glad for a berry to quench your thirst.”
“You are—”
“Jafir!” she said, sitting up, straddling my stomach and placing a finger to my lips to quiet me.
I closed my eyes obediently.
I had asked her about the knowing, the gift the Siarrah of Harik the Great was said to have. She had frowned and said it was a gift to many in the tribes of the Remnant, except that some sought it more earnestly than others.
Here, she had told me, pressing her fist gently against my ribs.
And here, she said again, pressing it against my breastbone.
This is the same instruction my ama gave to me.
It is the language of knowing, Jafir.
A language as old as the universe itself.
It is seeing without eyes,
And listening without ears.
It is what led me here to this valley.
It is how the Ancients survived in those early years.
How we survive now.
Trust the strength within you.
Now she tried to teach me this way of knowing.
She had already taught me much—the difference between berries that could nourish or kill, the seasons of the weed thannis, and the gods who ruled it all. In the last few months, I hadn’t missed a day of riding to the concealed valley to be with her. She consumed my thoughts and dreams. Everything had changed between us the day she held my slingshot and I placed my arms around her. It frightened me, this change, the way it made me feel and even think differently, but every day since then, as I rode to the valley, all I could think of was holding her again, kissing her, listening to her, watching her laugh.
Just as she had since the first time I saw her, she fascinated me, except that now I needed her like a raven needs the sky. It was a dangerous game we played, and from the beginning, we had known it couldn’t last, but now I wondered. She wondered. We talked about it. Love. Was that what this was? I love you, Jafir, she would say at any moment of the day, just to hear it said aloud. She would laugh and then say it again, her eyes solemn, looking into mine. I love you, Jafir de Aldrid. And it didn’t matter how many times she said it, I waited for her to say it again.
“Now what do you hear?” she asked, her hands resting on my chest.
I heard nothing but the distant chirp of a beetle, the ruffle of my horse’s breath, the swish of meadow grass in the breeze—and then she placed a berry in my mouth, sweet and juicy. “It calls to you, Jafir. It whispers, a voice riding the wind, Here I am, come find me. Listen.”
But all I heard was a different kind of knowing, one that even Morrighan couldn’t hear, a knowing that felt as sure and old as the earth itself. It whispered deep within my gut, I am yours, Morrighan, forever yours … and when the last star of the universe blinks silent, I will still be yours.
Chapter Ten
Morrighan
From the time I was small, Ama had told the stories of Before. Hundreds of stories. Sometimes it was to prevent me from crying and revealing our hiding place in the darkness when the scavengers ranged too near, desperate whispers in my ear that helped keep me silent. More often, at the end of a long day, she told them to satisfy me when there was no food to fill my belly.