The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski
THE GOD
THE YOUNG WOMAN CARRIED MEgingerly, as though I might bite her again with my thorns, and although she paused occasionally to marvel at my slightly shirred petals, the deep red of them, so dark that my center shadowed black, she conducted her task at the sugarcane estate, her face serious, concentrated, then returned to the city gate just before nightfall, when the sky was striped in blue and pink, and the cooling wind carried the sea’s salt. She presented her documents to the militiamen standing guard, the red of their uniforms an insipid, thin color compared to mine. She offered her Middling passport and her High-Kith mistress’s written command.
The soldier passed the documents back and was about to wave her forward, into the city, when he paused. What is that? he asked, pointing at me.
I found this flower, she said, on the jungle path.
Had she lived during the time of the gods, she would have been warned away from that path—indeed, the path would never have been built, for it cut through land sacred to us. But the god of thieves ruled Herrath, disguised as a mortal, and he despised us for casting him out. He made certain humans showed the pantheon no honor. Although he did not destroy the clearing in the jungle, or raze the temple one could find there, it was only because he had his own schemes, and believed the temple would one day serve him, for it was the only way he could ever return home to us.
I’ll buy it from you, the soldier said, and I immediately worried, because men who wield weapons are not known for their ready compassion.
It is not for sale, she said.
She carried me through the gate and into the High quarter. Just before she entered the servants’ door at the back of an ice-white mansion with gilded balconies, she slipped me inside her pocket. I was glad to be hidden away. The rich rarely pity anyone, because to do so is to question their own right to a position of power, or to envision themselves ejected from it. Neither is a comfortable feeling for those whose every waking hour is designed around comfort. I did not want to belong to the mistress. Should she see me, I would be taken, or become a forced gift. I liked where I was, snug in the girl’s pocket, soft against her thigh.
She brought me home: a low, modest house made from sand-pressed brick. A cup was fetched from the cupboard and filled with water. My broken stem slid into the water’s coolness and I sighed open, petals perfect, uncrushed. I had high hopes for the girl, whose face was the stuff of stories: plain, even for a human, and easily overlooked, save for her murky green eyes. Yes, I was held in a humble earthenware cup, hardly a fit vessel for a god, and I remained trapped by my bad bet, but the girl looked at me as though I were the whole world, and I thought surely it would not be impossible to do something—though what can a rose do?—to snag her tender heart.
“How gorgeous!” exclaimed another black-haired young woman who had appeared at the door. She resembled my girl yet was clearly a little older, more elegant, her manner constrained, her gestures imitative of someone wealthier than her clothes suggested. Her hair was as glossy as lacquer, brushed with five hundred strokes per night and scented with indi oil, her face finely cut. She might have even appealed to a god, were this before the time of our flight from the mortal realm. “Does it have a perfume?” She pressed her nose and mouth into me. “Heavenly!”
“Would you like it?” my girl said, and her older sister’s cool eyes glinted even though her mouth flattened into a somber line. “Oh no,” the sister said, “I couldn’t possibly.”
I shrank on my stem. Not her, I willed my girl. Give me to a child if you must, or someone lonely, or elderly, not this vivacious, acquisitive human. I yearned to be free, to find my form again, to retake my power and punish the god of games, that troublemaker.
This older sister was someone who would take what she could, and pin it to her forever. She would pity no one.
My girl lifted the earthenware cup. My leaves trembled. She set me in her sister’s waiting palms. “It is a gift, Raven,” my girl said. “I knew it was meant for you, the moment that I saw it.”