The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski

SID

MORAH RETREATS INTO THE SHADEof a small stone temple nearly lost in the twisting vines of the jungle. Dragonflies, their tight, focused bodies a shiny black, their wings like glass, dart among the one hundred poles. Frogs sing in the trees, more melodious than the sizzling sound of cicadas, yet resembling the insects’ constancy, their crescendo and fall.

I wander among the silver poles, which shine bright in the sun, each a tall sliver of light. But there is no path to anywhere. As much as I walk among them, I see nothing but more poles and the surrounding trees. I place a palm against one of them, watching my hand cast a narrow shadow on the silver until it disappears beneath my palm. The silver is warm to the touch, but it is an ordinary warmth, one caused by the heat of the day—of the sun and my flesh. I do not vanish as the bird did. I go nowhere. I am simply here.

A dragonfly lands on a pole, wings trembling. It, too, does not vanish.

Perhaps only one pole would give me access to the gods. Perhaps the way to the realm is to choose the right pole, and I have been lucky to have the Elysium show me which one.

But when I approach that very pole and touch it, nothing happens. I circle it, searching the silver for some mark or clue—writing, or a seam I can split open. Could a doorway to the gods be compressed inside of a pole? It seems impossible … but this whole endeavor seems impossible.

It occurs to me that if the gods are real, then it is no mere story that my father is touched by Death. That god haunted Arin, guided his life. Yet does Death cherish him, as my father believes? Or has that god bided his time, waiting to give Arin the Plain King one final twist of the knife by stealing his only child? Although the weather is hot, the pole I touch feels suddenly cold. I shiver, afraid.

The pole, however, reveals no hidden seam, no clue to how to make myself vanish as the Elysium vanished. I am relieved.

And disappointed. I think of Nirrim, of who she used to be, so ready to see how my arrogance was really self-doubt. She was so true to herself. Brave and honest, while I hid behind jokes and slippery double-meaning words. I think of her surrendering that part of herself for the sake of revealing this country’s truth to its people.

I think of myself, yearning to live up to my parents’ example.

I want my own story.

I want to save, and be saved.

The pole I touch is identical to every other pole of the hundred. This one, like the others, reflects my face. It reflects the sky. The green of the trees. The frogs’ song annoys me now. It makes me feel stupid. My mother would know what to do, if she were here. There is no code Queen Kestrel cannot crack, no riddle she cannot solve.

I sit in the mud, surrounded by one hundred towering needles. I flop onto my back and fling my arm over my eyes against the sun, trying to blot out the sounds of frogs and birds. Perhaps the way to understand the poles is not to look at them, but to listen.

Yet I hear nothing but the jungle. If the poles make any noise, or speak in some language, it is inaudible to me.

My frustration grows. It feels like pressure set against a locked door, leaning and shoving, ready to burst through.

But I am my mother’s child. I can lie as well as she, and win as well as she. I was born in the year of the god of games. What is this, but a game I need to play?

I enjoy quick moves in a game, the sequence of play where one move provokes a chain reaction, until I sweep what everyone has wagered to me, mine by right, by skill. But I know that not all games have such a rhythm, or don’t until the very end. Borderlands, for example, and Bite and Sting build slowly. They involve setting a trap and waiting to see if it will be sprung.

Maybe what this situation requires is patience.

I sit up, eyes open, and wait. I watch the poles as though they are not inanimate objects but living things, and the more I stare, the more they do look alive. As the sun moves in the sky, the light changes the poles’ appearance. Some of them cease to look bright, but instead pale and dull, as though carved from birch. As the sun goes down, some poles darken until they look like lead, and then vanish, disappearing into the poles lined up behind them. But when I spring to my feet, spurred by hope, and rush to where those poles were, I find that what I have witnessed is only an optical illusion. The vanished poles are in fact there, and have always been there. A mere trick of the light made them seem gone. I shift position in the clearing, turning in a circle. Some poles, depending on how the light hits them and where I stand, appear or disappear, and seem darker or brighter.

Just before sunset, Morah comes bearing a gourd of water and perrins, a deep purple fruit Nirrim loves. They must grow wild here. Morah leaves me again, and I am not hungry but I eat, thinking of Nirrim. It is hard to love someone who is gone. It is a cruel twist of fate that I love the memory of someone whose power is memory. I wonder if what I am doing makes any sense, if I have come to this island, this clearing, only to witness my failure.

Go to the realm of the gods?

Negotiate with one of them?

Retrieve a woman’s heart?

Impossible.

Well, I did tell you to be a hero, Roshar says. I imagine his signature smirk, and exactly what he would say if he saw me now: Heroes are born to do the impossible. I do the impossible all the time! Lazy little lion. You are being asked to do only three impossible things.

The sun goes down into the trees. The tips of each pole light up like stars.

No, like candles.

The hundred poles burn like candles, like the kind we light for the gods on Ninarrith, each pole a taper with a flamelike light at its point. They burn, and I hold my breath, stunned by their beauty. I move to stand in the center of the clearing, surrounded by the candles, one for each god in the pantheon, and think, Now.

I feel like I have waited all my life for my moment: the hour when I stop being Kestrel and Arin’s child, and become myself.

But the moment, if it was one, is over quickly. The trees swallow the sun. Frogsong swells in happiness. The lights on the poles go out. The clearing is dark now, and will only get darker.

I sit heavily back on the ground, feeling foolish. I feel unchosen. I felt, for one minute, so sure that I was special, that I would be lifted from this earth not for anything that I did but for who I am, that all I had to do was wish for something, and ask, and wait, and it would be given. Isn’t that what gods do—give mortals undeserved gifts? Don’t all gods have their favorites?

It is embarrassing to hope to be a favorite. It is a good thing that no one, not even Morah, is around to witness it.

Except me, Roshar says. I saw everything.

But Roshar’s words are a figment of my imagination. He is just a part of me I have loaned his voice to.

I stretch out on the ground, weary from my journey—did I really anchor my ship in Ethin’s harbor this morning? Did I really gasp beneath the weight of Nirrim’s body, sure I could be loved, not seeing that she had changed, that the way she kissed me was different?

I am weary of myself. Maybe I can’t go to the realm of the gods, but at least I can sleep, so I do.

The silence of the frogs wakes me up. The cool air and gray sky tell me that it is near dawn. My clothes are surely muddy by now. The stains will never come out.

My ears ache from the silence. The frogs were so loud they woke me several times in the night, and I’d open my eyes in the blackness and hope that I had somehow found a way beyond this world, but no. I was in a jungle, tormented by noisy amphibians, questing after my villainous lover’s missing heart. Wonderful. I went back to sleep. Now it’s as if the frogs sang so hard they actually died. Maybe they went to the realm of the gods. I hate everyone.

My belly is pinched in hunger. Fruit and water is poor food for a hero. I could forage, I suppose, which is what Morah must have done, but stubbornness keeps me rooted to the ground. The poles are dark. But dawn is coming.

What kind of player does not see her game to the end? What coward steps away from the gaming table?

This is a new game, but I will learn it. Maybe the sun will show me how.

Dawn comes pink over the trees. The poles glow with rosy light. Maybe they are the color of the kind of cloud Nirrim was named after. The sun rises, and again the poles become candles, light dancing on their needle points. Frogs sing again, as though they were waiting just for this.

And as I listen, I wonder if they are waiting for me. But to do what? Again, like last night, I feel as though the world is holding its breath, as though I am a child and someone is waiting for me to figure out something obvious.

It occurs to me that this is a game not to play, but to understand.

What is my purpose here?

I have come here to disappear.

But how can I disappear? I can never escape myself. Even when I sleep, I dream—or wake up and hate frogs.

I stand, an idea growing at the back of my mind, one that I can’t even articulate to myself yet. All I know is a searching urge.

How can I lose myself?

I remember reaching to touch one of the poles and seeing my shadow reflected thinly there, until my hand closed around the metal, eating its own shadow. I approach a pole, and there, skinnily reflected, is the long shadow I throw. I look like a pole. I look like a black version of one of these silver poles. I get closer, ignoring the sky, the trees, the sun, the dammed frogs, focusing only on myself, growing longer and thicker until the blackness I cast seems to fill the pole entirely.

I can disappear, I think, if I become the shadow.

I focus entirely on my shadow, continually stepping ever closer, thinking that surely I will touch the silver surface.

But I don’t.

I step into the blackness I have become, and then the blackness becomes all I can see.