From Gabriel, only bewilderment: (Share?) Songbird too stayed still, body and mind unmoving, as if paralyzed.
After a moment, Yancey repeated the question. Do you choose to share your fire, and forsake the solitary flame?
Nothing. Nothing. And then —
Yes. A sharp, jagged burst, its meaning nonetheless clear, while something else — some long splash of force, searing to look upon — reached out from Songbird toward Gabe, then stopped bare inches from his face, trembling with effort. Make him understand, Sophronia Love; you are his mother, he yearns to obey you. I cannot hold back for long. Make him answer, before I do as my nature urges.
Now Sophy was the one frozen. For deep in Gabe’s thoughts, tangled with hers, she could feel his mind start on a horrifying slide from fear and confusion to outright hunger, a deep, greedy, brutish appetite wholly unlike anything any infant should be able to feel. He began to struggle, reaching out for Songbird’s power with his own, a crackling white tendril that burned icily, stabbing Sophy from breast to gut. If Gabriel touched Songbird’s power in hunger, they were lost, she knew — simply knew — and knew, as well, that there was no real way to explain, not in any way Gabriel could comprehend.
Blindly, instinctively, she seized him, gripping his inchoate voracity the same way she’d grab his wrist to stop him trying to touch a candle: No! Not safe. Hurt. And then, though it tore her soul in two to do it: Like this.
Sent pain in a burst, all her own worst memories distilled, and “heard” — felt — him howl, at the touch of it. Then flooded him with urgent love just a second later, until he yielded, unable even to imagine resisting Mama on something she wanted so; swerved him straight into Songbird’s grip with his mind wide open, a friendship-clutching hand rather than a bite-poised mouth. Thinking back, at the same time, as though his skull were her very own puppet-head: Yes, we agree, to everything. We swear to share the fire.
(Yes.)
Light burst over Tse Diyil, turning night briefly into day. The detonation of commingling power knocked Sophy backward out of mind-bond; she struck the ground with a horrified gasp. Christ’s name, she’d let go of Gabriel, dropped him! Furiously excoriating herself, she struggled back to her feet — to find Gabriel floating in mid-air, five feet off the ground, staring with wide eyes and a delighted grin at Songbird, as if she was the most wonderful toy he had ever seen.
Songbird hovered likewise, airborne, opposite him; her blanket had fallen to the ground, revealing the tatters of the red silk gown she’d arrived in. But that gown was mending itself even as Sophy watched, spinning itself busily back into wholeness. She, too, wore a stunned smile, so unlike what Sophy knew as “her” that for a dazed moment, she wondered if this could really be the same girl. Some other albino Celestial, no doubt, come to take her place, and turn this whole affair into one giant jest.
A sphere of blazing golden-green radiance surrounded she and Gabe, pouring a spring morning’s heat and light out onto the winter air. The conjure-fire had been blown apart, scattered to ash.
Gabriel laughed, and flew at Songbird; she caught him with perfect grace, naturally as Sophy herself, and let him sling his legs ’round her monkey-style. Not sure if this was dream or nightmare, Sophy saw that Songbird’s fingertips were once more adorned in their former golden, talon-like sheaths, and that the power which glowed in her eyes was matched, hue for hue and force for force, in Gabriel’s. Petulant girl; sweet, harmless infant; both were gone, for the nonce. The twinned thing before her was something alien, and hideously strong. . . .
As if sensing his mother’s terror, however, Gabriel abruptly wriggled, turning in Songbird’s arms ’til he saw where she stood, aghast — then leaped free, hurtling through the air to thud neatly into Sophy’s arms. They closed ’round him automatically, trained to respond to his weight, and he giggled, squirming against her. Might’ve been any given night when his cries woke her, with him lying there infuriatingly happy, cheered by sight of her dragging herself half-asleep to his cradle.
“He is your son.” Even Songbird’s voice was different — calmer, more generous. She had drifted back down to ground a diplomatic few yards distant, hair eddying loose about silk-clad shoulders. “Though I cannot sense his mind as you do, the bond conveys — impressions, and this I know: he will never not be your son, Sophronia. He is simply . . . more than that, now.”
At the sound of Songbird’s voice, Gabe wriggled about again, grinning at his new friend; Songbird smiled back. Beyond her, Yancey stirred with a groan from the heap she’d been knocked into, pushing herself up on her elbows.
“It worked, then.” Coming as it did in the union’s wake, Yiska’s voice sounded discordant, almost unfamiliar; Sophy winced, then wished she hadn’t. But Songbird’s smile didn’t falter — instead, she revolved in place as on a spinning pedestal, arms spread, to show off the marvel of her restoration, and grinned yet wider when Yiska could not keep from gaping.
“Ohé!” She said, at last, admiringly. “You are a sight, in your glory — better than ever, to my mind. I rejoice, to see you like this again.”
Once more, Sophy watched a blush tint Songbird’s too-pale cheeks, bright and blotchy. “There are others to thank, for that,” she replied, at last. “And I . . . will endeavour to do so.”
Yiska grinned her approval. “Now you are learning, White Shell Girl.”
That same spark, leaping between them, might’ve lead to something more, if not for what next intruded: a huge black thing which breached the darkness beyond the circle, hurtling itself at Yiska’s back — glassy spike-ruff bristling, wolf jaws agape in a soundless snarl, and taloned ape-hands spread out to seize, rip, tear and gut. Wolf? Bear? Shock and disbelief slowed Sophy’s heartbeat to agonized hammer blows. She saw Yiska twist, bringing up her spear even as Grandma heaved up a gout of power, but both were too slow, caught unprepared
, too late.
Then: green-gold force lanced through the beast’s ribcage, pinning it in mid-air. The thing writhed and flailed, shrieks so harsh and high they near dissolved into a buzz, like some mad, dying wasp. Yiska reeled back, leaned on her own spear-shaft, panting. Grandma’s half-shaped hexing broke apart in her hands and dribbled, sizzling, all down her front, leaving smoking black tracks in its wake, though she appeared not to notice.
Numb, Sophy followed the line of power back to its source and saw Songbird, aloft once more with hand outstretched, holding the beast transfixed with a single pointing finger. She seemed as surprised as anyone else.
The green-gold aura surrounding her stretched to Gabe, wailing in Sophy’s arms with rage and fright; abruptly, as this rose to one single angry shriek, the light flared and the beast exploded in a thunder-crack of shards that sifted the ground like coal-coloured snow. Startled, Songbird thudded down and turned to blink at Gabriel, who buried his face in Sophy’s breast, still bawling. The green-gold light faded, leaving them all in the dark.
It hit Sophy how close they had all just come to dying. Her knees buckled; she was just barely able to turn the collapse into a clumsy seat-taking, Yancey Kloves’ hand suddenly wedged ’neath one armpit to lever her down safely, though the cold ground’s impact still rattled her spine. She gulped, shivering, hugging Gabe hard as felt safe to. It’d just been so fast — only now did she see Yiska’s braves lunge into the circle, weapons drawn far too late, and useless, while shouted questions from the others skirled up too, as they came sprinting. Yiska’s answers were curt, and sounded disappointed.
“Must’ve come through right at the moment the Oath took,” Yancey managed, voice raw, staring into the dark. “Might even be the Oath itself brought it through — that the burst of power widened the Crack, or something like.” Looking up, to Grandma: “We were all so ritual-took we’d have missed the Last Trump, probably . . . but I can’t think how else it got by you.”
“Do not flatter, Experiance Kloves. Even one so old as I does not always sense everything, immediately.”
“Mmmm, and the eddies of the ch’i still swirl in disturbance,” Songbird agreed, conjuring a marshlight sphere between her palms, illuminating her frown of concentration. “There may be more on the way, requiring vigilance from all. We have been undeservedly lucky.”
“In more ways than one,” Yiska murmured, smiling. To which Songbird looked down, unmistakably pleased, and Yancey grinned again.
For a moment, only — a wholly uncharitable one — Sophy’s thoughts went back to Chess Pargeter and his Reverend, Leviticus 18:22, and everything similar. But . . . if whatever had grown up between these two ladies was somehow helping Songbird to find her place in the world, she felt unqualified to resent it; they already were unnatural, after all, to begin with. A bit more wouldn’t hurt, probably.