Song of the Forever Rains by E.J. Mellow

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Larkyra anxiously peered into the opening to the Fade at the far end of the Leaching Bridge, the fog swirling within the stone archway. Reaching her arm out, Larkyra watched the color of her skin drip away to desaturated grays as it got closer to the door.

The plan that Achak had laid out was in fact difficult. It needed the Thief King’s blessing before details could be added to paint their path forward. So Zimri and Achak had set out from the grotto to confer with him, while she, her sisters, and Darius had traveled to wait by the archway that held their answers.

“That’s where Achak lives?” asked Darius to Niya as he gazed up at the floating island.

“As far as we know.”

“But it’s so . . .”

“Small?” suggested Niya.

“Cute,” finished Darius.

Niya laughed. “Yes, but don’t tell Achak that. I’m sure it was all very modern and sleek at the time of its creation.”

Larkyra found it strange to watch Darius with her sisters, to see how comfortable he was around them. His smiles came easier in their presence, especially toward her, and she tried to ignore how they set her heart alight. His curiosity, quick mind, and calming presence seemed a natural addition to her family—and a desired one, if she were to be honest with herself.

Larkyra bit her lower lip, glancing back to the door of the Fade. No, she thought, best to never be honest about that. For what could ever come of such feelings?

Her life was a cacophony of complications and deception, while Darius needed calm, needed truths.

And anyway, they had more important tasks ahead than her and her fancies.

“Lark?” Niya called over to her. “Is this true what Lord Mekenna says about you throwing dust in his face?”

“Uh, yes?”

“How spectacular.” She beamed, turning back to Darius. “Were you very livid?”

“Extremely livid.” He stole a glance at Larkyra, keeping a small smile at bay.

Larkyra ignored the buzz in her chest from such a look.

“They are back,” said Arabessa, watching Zimri and Achak stride toward them from the forest path on the other side of the bridge. “Well?” she asked as they approached. “What did he say?”

“The Thief King gives his blessing for the Mousai to help Lord Darius,” announced Zimri.

“Really?” asked Larkyra, rather surprised. She had been sure of a refusal. Perhaps even banishment, as she had heard the king was fond of doing when those under his command disobeyed. And by altering their mission’s plans without counsel and allowing Darius to figure out her and her sisters’ identities, well, that was a very bad form of disobedience indeed.

“Help for what price?” asked Darius.

“Nothing you won’t be able to pay,” said Zimri. “For if this goes successfully, you’ll be helping the king as well.”

“I will?”

“Yes.” Zimri nodded. “He feels shutting off the buying of phorria from Hayzar’s end would eventually draw out the dealer, force them to come looking for their devoted client.”

“So our plans to perform at the engagement ball . . . ?” asked Arabessa.

“Encouraged,” said Zimri. “But he agrees that none of it can happen until we find the solution to performing around those without the gifts, which most of the guests will be. Your concert must be heard and seen as though without magic for Hayzar’s madness to appear isolated when you cast your spell.”

“Even if you concentrated your performance to just him”—Darius looked at the trio—“those without would still be affected?”

“I concentrated my singing when I healed my palm,” said Larkyra. “And that was just one of us. Did it affect you then?”

Darius swallowed. “What do you suggest we do?”

“That is what will be found in there.” Achak pointed to the Fade. “Johanna was a powerful sorceress and would know the answers we seek.”

The sisters stared at the gray swirling archway, beyond which they could find their mother.

But at what cost?

“You know what would make all of this a lot simpler,” said Niya, turning to Darius. “To just kill Hayzar.”

“Niya,”chided Arabessa.

“What? You know it’s true.”

“Yes, but it is not our decision to make.”

Larkyra had found it strange as well that Darius did not ultimately want Hayzar dead, after everything he’d suffered. But it seemed the lord could not stoop to his stepfather’s level, no matter how angry he was toward the man.

Something about Darius’s ability to rise above the darkness that had been inflicted upon him put a weight on Larkyra’s shoulders, made her want to be better herself.

“I know it must seem odd to you,” admitted Darius. “But I’d rather not be haunted by that spirit. I merely want my lands to prosper again, my people to be as happy as I remember them when my mother was still alive. And death seems too easy an end for my stepfather. If I’m right about what one of your performances is like when specifically intended to drive one crazy, well, he will suffer what he deserves for however long he can stomach it.”

Perhaps he has a bit of a retributive streak after all,thought Larkyra, somewhat pleased.

“If he reacts like those in the Thief Kingdom have done in front of all his guests,” said Arabessa, “he will be brought straight to a madhouse. The pain collected there would be unending.”

A spark lit Darius’s gaze, but he remained silent.

There was no amount of phorria that could match the power of the Mousai when together, so Achak’s plan for the sisters to spell Hayzar into madness at Larkyra’s engagement ball was rather genius. They needed many things for the duke to be properly declared an unfit master of Lachlan, witnesses being one of them. The other: assurance that the blame could never be traced back to either Darius or Larkyra.

The trick was how it was to be done.

“Okay, then.” Larkyra straightened. “It’s settled. And since this was my assignment, I will go into the Fade.”

“No,” Darius was quick to reply. “It is my burden. I will—”

“She is my mother.” Larkyra cut him off.

“As she is ours.” Arabessa’s gaze was gentle.

“Yes,” said Larkyra, her stomach twisting in that forever guilt, “but it is because of me she is in there.”

“Larkyra,”said Niya and Arabessa at once.

“You cannot think such a thing.” Her eldest sister reached out to squeeze her hand in earnest.

“But I do.” The words came out tired as Larkyra’s familiar guilt twisted like a dagger in her chest. “And I will have no peace until I can apologize.”

“Darling.” Niya pulled her into a hug. “We did not know you felt this way.”

Arabessa’s added embrace pulled them tighter. “No one blames you for what happened.”

“I do.” Larkyra stepped back, forcing away the tears that wanted to fall free. “I blame me. It was my scream that took her breaths away. My birth. Tell me how that is not truth?”

Neither sister responded, their gazes pained.

“So you see . . .” She swallowed, glancing at the group, at Darius, whose wide eyes told her he understood her suffering completely. “It is exactly I who must do this.”

Without another word, Larkyra strode toward the doorway that sat like the end of all living things, for that was exactly what it was.

She hesitated at the opening, wondering if any would try stopping her again, part of her wanting them to.

But none did.

She was both hurt and relieved at once.

Until she felt a presence by her side.

“Let me ease your burden, my songbird.” Her father’s voice swam around her.

Larkyra looked up to find the large man now beside her, pocketing a portal token.

“Oh, Father.” She threw herself into his arms, unable to contain her weeping any longer as he wrapped her in a hug. “I am so sorry,” she mumbled into his chest, breathing in the scent of home—honeysuckles under the sun. “I have failed you. I have—”

“Hush.” He stroked her back. “You have failed no one.”

She tilted her head up, taking in his warm eyes. “But I have revealed the Mousai to Lord Mekenna.”

“As I have heard it”—Dolion wiped a stray tear from Larkyra’s cheek—“there were no other choices if you were to help those in need. And the lord and his people, they need our help very much.”

“They do.”

“Then let us give it.” He held her shoulders. “Our secrets are safe once more within the Secret Sealer, so there is no need to worry.”

“But what about—”

“My darling.” Dolion cut her off gently. “I am extremely proud of you.”

Larkyra bit her lower lip against the threat of more tears. She clung to her father’s words, desperately, as though they hadn’t been real and she needed to hear them again.

I am extremely proud of you.

All the worry she had held tight since the beginning of her mission, the pressure to succeed to her family’s expectations, loosened ever so gently.

“Your mother and I knew what fate we might bring before your birth, and though I miss her with every sand fall, you are one of the best gifts the lost gods gave us.”

“Father,”Larkyra choked out as he kissed her forehead.

“Understand that guilt mustn’t carry your decision forward.”

Larkyra glanced beyond him to where her sisters, Darius, Zimri, and Achak watched from the center of the bridge. “Even so,” she said, stepping back, wiping away her tears. “I must go in. This walk is meant for me.”

Dolion watched her for a long while, his eyes seeming to play through many thoughts before they stopped on one that had him smiling. “You are very much like her.”

Larkyra held her breath, her heart swelling. It was the first time she’d heard her father admit what she’d always assumed.

“She will be glad to see you.” He removed something tucked inside his robes and held it out. “Your mother’s favorite. It will help you find her.”

Larkyra took the small bundle of wildflowers from her father, the specks of yellow on their petals holding out against the Fade’s hungry, desaturated pull. “How will I know where to go?”

“Merely keep walking until she arrives. And my songbird”—Dolion tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear—“remember to be quick. Time does not pass on a straight line in the Fade. More years will be taken than you realize if you are not aware of your stay.”

Larkyra nodded, taking one last glance at her family, her father, and finally Darius.

The lord’s gaze was searing, as if he wished to tell her many things, but before she gave in to her urge to go to him, Larkyra turned and on her last breath stepped through the fog and into the Fade.

There was nothing.

Forever.

Larkyra didn’t even know if where she stepped was ground, only that her feet were moving.

There was no light or darkness, only a colorless cloud of existence, and her ears rang in the silence. If she was still breathing, she could not tell, for the sensation of air moving through her lungs seemed to not matter here.

She gripped the flowers tighter to her chest, their yellow color seeping to gray, and though she tried to be conscious of the passing grains of sand, Larkyra had no sense of how long she had walked.

It felt as if she’d recently stepped through the stone archway. At the same time it felt like a lifetime ago.

Larkyra decided she did not like the Fade.

She peered around, trying to gauge how far she’d walked, but the mist of this world kept any distance undetectable. How would she find her way back?

“Sticks,” she muttered.

Larkyra.

She whipped her head to the left.

More fog.

Larkyra.

The voice grew closer, and though she could not tell if her heart was still beating, if it was, Larkyra knew it would be pumping rather fast.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded muffled.

Nothing.

Until—

The mist gathered tighter, as if pulling itself together to create a form in front of her.

It was a woman with no discernable body, only illusions of a shoulder, a bare arm, perhaps a leg, all going in and out of the fog. No clothes could be seen as a distinguished face with high cheekbones, full lips, and long colorless hair floating in waves gazed at Larkyra.

“My songbird,” said the woman with a gentle smile.

A smile that matched Larkyra’s own.

“M-Mother?” Larkyra forced her legs to remain strong, when all she wanted was to fall to her knees.

The woman nodded as achromatic eyes—which Larkyra knew had once been green—glistened.

They took each other in, the spirit of her mother constantly shifting as Larkyra remained a solid form in her gown and cloak.

This is real,she thought desperately. She is real.

“You are so tall,” her mother eventually said, her voice thick moss on a shaded tree.

“Like you.” The words were out before Larkyra could stop them.

Another wide grin. “Yes, your father was right. We have much in common.”

“I—” Her words dried up in her throat. Now that Larkyra was here with the woman she had always wished to meet, had felt such guilt over, spilled tears for, she hardly knew how to feel, what to say. She only knew she felt frantic to be in this moment more than any other she had so far lived. “Here.” Larkyra stuck out the flowers. “Father said they are your favorite.”

The woman glanced down, more warmth seeping into her gaze. “They are lovely. That man never ceases to charm.”

Larkyra frowned as Johanna made no move to take them. “Do you not want them?”

“Nothing can be added to the Fade that is not brought here by death,” she explained. “If I tried to touch them, my hand would go right through.”

“Oh.” Larkyra pulled the flowers back. “But that means . . .”

“That I will be unable to hug you?” Johanna’s eyes softened in sorrow. “Yes, my songbird.”

Larkyra swallowed her disappointment. How torturous this must be for her father upon his visits, unable to hold the woman he loved.

“But let us be grateful that the lost gods gave us this small mercy of seeing one another.” Johanna seemed to know Larkyra’s thoughts. “For in some worlds, the living can never visit their dead.”

At the mention of her mother being exactly that, Larkyra lost whatever strength she was using to keep herself together. Dropping the flowers, the blooms disappearing into mist, she covered her face with her hands and wept.

“Darling.” Her mother’s form moved closer, as if the cloud that contained her attempted to wrap around Larkyra.

“I’m so sorry,” sobbed Larkyra through her fingers. “I’m so sorry to have put you here.”

“Stop.” Johanna’s words came out rather strong, and Larkyra blinked up. “The only thing you have done is live the life given to you.”

“But my scream—”

“Is not what killed me.”

This had Larkyra taking a step back. “What?”

“My child, I was sick when I had you.”

“Sick?”

A nod. “I had gone to visit friends in the north, where the weather turned unseasonably cold, and I fell into a severe fever. By the time I returned home, there was a great possibility I might lose you. Achak helped me make a tonic to quicken your arrival, though we both knew it put me at risk. Childbirth is a difficult thing, Larkyra. And while your first screams were filled with much untamed magic, the only thing they did was help ease my pain as I held you in my arms before the Fade took me.”

Larkyra’s mind swirled with all that she had believed to be true. While no one had ever outright said it was her yell at birth that had killed her mother, she had always assumed. Especially with the rumors and whispers and the destructive magic she could feel brewing inside her, even when she was barely out of the nursery.

“Your father learned of what I did afterward and was very angry at everyone for a time. He didn’t make his first visit here until you were ten. But I never regretted my decision. How would my daughters become who they were destined to be otherwise?”

“And who is that?”

Johanna smiled. “We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we? Now please, dry your eyes and tell me why you have come, my darling. We have little time left before another year is taken.”

Putting on a brave face, Larkyra pushed away the mountain of other questions she had for her mother and instead told her all that had happened and what she sought.

When she was done, Johanna’s form churned before her, her gaze pensive. “You will need to find orenda. It is a rare plant that only grows in one of the smaller southern isles of Esrom.”

“The hidden underwater kingdom?”

A nod. “But I fear that is not the difficult part of your task,” added Johanna. “Because it can be used to make people immune to magic for a time, tahopka guard the bloom.”

Larkyra blanched. “I thought they had been killed off.”

“Many things thought dead can be found in Esrom.”

“Tahopka . . .” Larkyra whispered the name again.

Part woman, part bird, part snake, and an extremely vicious, territorial creature. Legend had it the queen of their kind had decimated an entire city and half her own family when her lover, who was a princess of a neighboring land, had been caught looking a bit too friendly toward her younger sister.

“Then it is impossible.” Larkyra’s shoulders slumped.

“No.” Johanna’s hand floated up, a spirit’s touch to Larkyra’s chin. “The road to anything truly worth having is often steep, but think of the view when you get there.”

Larkyra stared into her mother’s shining gaze, at the power, even in death, that still swam there. “I love you.” The words floated out, free and true.

Johanna’s responding smile seemed to light their entire world. “I love you.”

Though they could not hug, the intention surrounded them, the warmth of a mother and daughter who did not need a lifetime together to feel what was real.

“Now, to complete the elixir,” her mother eventually went on, “tell Achak they will need to gather perryweeds, orange blossoms, and meadow shade from their garden, along with a crushed bit of their toenail. There should be a precise recipe in one of their spell books from Shajara.”

“How did they not know of this before?”

“Achak may be wise,” explained her mother ruefully, “but they were always a lazy creature—and sharing one body makes them far too scatterbrained. They relied on me for such details entirely too much.”

“I’m sure they would love to know you thought them lazy and scattered.” Larkyra grinned.

“Oh, I told them so.” Her mother laughed, the sound so similar to her own. “On many occasions. But you must go now, my child.” Her mother said what they both knew. “Walk with the intention of leaving, and the stone archway will eventually appear. When you are out, please give your sisters and father a kiss for me.”

“I will.” Larkyra nodded. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, my darling.”

Larkyra readied herself to turn from the mother she had only just met, but a light brush to her shoulder stopped her. “Regarding this Lord Mekenna,” said Johanna, a twinkle in her gaze. “Remember you are brave, my songbird, so do not fear whatever you might feel.”

A quick unease filled Larkyra’s veins at her mother’s words, a frown of confusion, but before she could press her on the matter, Johanna dissipated, becoming one with the impenetrable fog once more.

“Well played, Mother,” said Larkyra wryly before she walked to find the exit that would take her away.

When she stepped back onto the Leaching Bridge, Larkyra blinked a few times to adjust to the light. Though around her was mainly a black abyss, Achak’s floating island, the bridge, and the forest in the distance still seemed large and intrusive after being in a space filled with nothing.

“Larkyra.” It was Darius who was the first to greet her, stepping away from the group to grab her shoulders, searching her person. “You’re back.” In the next moment she was in his embrace, his arms going around her protectively. “Thank the lost gods.”

She tensed at first before loosening into his strong hold, deciding she would gladly stay like this for eternity.

“She was barely gone.” Niya’s voice snapped into their bubble, and they each pulled back.

Darius cleared his throat. “Yes, well, uh . . .”

“Did you see her?” asked Arabessa, interrupting the lord’s spluttering.

“Yes.” Larkyra took in the group. “But first, Father, I have to ask, why did you never tell me my magic is not what killed my mother?”

Dolion looked shaken by her words. “Is that what you believed was the cause?”

Larkyra nodded with her swallow, her magic churning hot in her gut. Evidently it did not like to be the blame for anything.

“Oh, my songbird.” Dolion pulled Larkyra into his arms. “I fear I have failed you, being stuck in my own grief. I never talked to you about her death because I specifically didn’t want you to think you had any part in it. Your gifts could never have hurt your mother. They come from her; all of your powers do.” He looked to her sisters. “You are not to blame. Never to blame. I am so sorry you have believed this for so long.”

It was as if Larkyra’s entire body melted into her father then; all her tension and guilt and self-berating from the past nineteen years poured from her in a rush. She didn’t know whether to cry or laugh or both.

“You were the last great piece of magic Johanna ever created.” Her father moved Larkyra so he could look her in the eyes. “Never doubt that.”

She could only nod, unable to speak for how overwhelmingly bright everything had suddenly become: the colors on her father’s clothes, the very air around them, the feel of her magic. How could the simple act of stringing certain words together change the very shape of a soul? For that was the only way Larkyra could describe what was happening inside her. Her soul was changing, expanding to something new and hopeful and devoid of grief.

“Thank you, Father,” she eventually pushed herself to say.

“I love you, my songbird.” He took her into his arms once more. “And so does your mother.”

“And so do I,” chimed in Arabessa as she joined their hug.

“And I.” Niya quickly followed. “Despite how annoying you are. Hey! Father, Arabessa pinched me!”

“Good, then I don’t have to.”

Larkyra laughed in the center of their tight embrace. Zimri was the last to join as Dolion tugged him into their family’s circle.

“Don’t even think about it.” Achak’s voice had Niya stepping back after attempting to pull them in as well.

Darius stood off to the side, his gaze holding a curious longing as he took in their group. Larkyra’s chest ached for him, for if anyone deserved the love of a family, it was he.

Perhaps I can provide that,a very quiet voice inside her whispered.

Larkyra blinked, startled at her own thought. Quickly she pushed it down, locking it back up tightly. There was much still to do. Such a feeling had no place here.

“So what did Mother say?” asked Niya, pulling her attention back. “Did she have a solution for us?”

“Yes,” said Larkyra. “But I fear you especially will not like it.”

“Me?” Niya frowned. “Why’s that?”

“Because,” said Larkyra, “we’ll need the help of a certain pirate lord from Esrom.”