The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski
SID
IT IS HARD TO SEE. My eyes water as though in direct sunlight, but the realm of the gods is not necessarily bright, only too much: prismatic, shifting in colors I have never seen and could not name, the air so intense on my skin that it reminds me of how water can sometimes be so cold that it burns. There is no ground beneath me. I have no sense of direction, only of dizziness, but when the god of thieves reveals himself, I wrestle down my nausea and think grass.
Grass unfurls beneath my feet. I had, I think, forgotten I even had feet, forgotten how to stand, but now I see my boots and the grass beneath them, though it is so thick and soft it feels pillowy, and the green is iridescent.
The gods surround me. Many have human features, even if their bodies trail surprisingly into ribbons, or wings, or smoke, or water. One looks made entirely of ivory, pink eyes unblinking, legs changing into tree roots that plunge into the grass. A god whose body is as sheer as blue glass bares icicle teeth at me in a cruel smile.
The god of thieves, however, looks like an ordinary man—so ordinary, in fact, that my mind slides away from him, and I cannot hold on to a single image of any one of his features. It is as if the moment I see him, I also unsee him. He lifts his palm to show me Nirrim’s heart, and I see nothing, but hear several of the gods sigh, as though surprised by the sudden presence of beauty.
“What do you want in exchange?” I say to him. “Ask, and I will give it to you.”
“So brave,” says the god. “What shall I take from you? Your ability to sleep? You shall go mad, you know, without it. Your sense of taste, so that everything you eat is ash in your mouth? Perhaps I should demand your firstborn.”
“My ways do not lead to children.”
“I was joking,” he says. “It is too late for you anyway, no matter what your ways may be.”
I don’t understand that, but an energy ripples through the gods: a resonant rumble like the growl of a piano’s lowest notes. They get the joke, even if I do not. “Wait,” I say. “Do you swear that what you hold and what you will give to me is truly Nirrim’s heart? Do you swear upon the pantheon?”
He smiles approvingly. “Cautious mortal. Yes, I swear upon the pantheon that I hold Nirrim’s gift for compassion.”
The sky above the gods is a livid pink streaked with black, as though the dawn was ripped with claws to show the starry night behind it. The stars chime.
“I do not want this anymore.” The god seems to toss the emptiness on his palm up and down, as though he holds a ball. I still see nothing, but for an instant I think something rose-colored twists above his palm. “Are you aware, Sid of the Herrani, that your lover possesses more power than a Half Kith should, for one born so late after the pantheon left your world? We gods left Herrath hundreds of human years ago. What gift of ours that runs in the blood of mortals should have diminished by now. Do you know why Nirrim is different?”
“No,” I say, but the hazy god of death seems to know or guess. His cloudy form sharpens into bladelike lines and his underfed face whitens to the color of bone. His eyes burn blue with fury, and all the gods save the human-looking woman at his side cringe away from him. I cannot move from where I stand. Vines as thin and gray as spider legs have crept up my boots and sting against my ankles. I have been afraid ever since I saw the first god, who looked ready to scoop the brain from my skull, but now I am terrified.
The god of thieves continues, “Your Nirrim has so much power because she is not the distant descendant of a god, her lineage mixed with mortality for generations. Oh no. She is pure demigod. One of us broke the pantheon’s oath. One of us visited the mortal realm twenty years ago and loved a human. That human bore a child exactly like the ones who murdered Discovery. I declare that one of us is a hypocrite. I shall prove it, and the pantheon shall welcome me home. The god of luck must love you, Sid of the Herrani, for I am feeling generous. I shall give Nirrim’s heart to you freely, with no price exacted from you, so long as someone steps forward to claim responsibility for Nirrim.”
Now I see what is on his palm: a rose-colored mist, dense at its center, like a peony. The metallic spider-leg vines creep farther up. They wrap around my waist.
“But if that god does not come forward now,” says Thievery, “I shall destroy this demigod’s heart. I shall swallow it whole. It is mine to do with as I will, given in fair trade by Nirrim. Well?” His coy voice ripples like water. “Who is it? Or would you like to see the most precious part of your mortal child destroyed?”
A red-haired god who looks almost human, save that one hand has far too many fingers, says, in a chiding tone, “Thievery, that will hardly flush out the guilty party, given Sid of the Herrani’s predicament.”
The cold vines are at my throat. I can barely speak. “You promised you would give it to me.”
“I will,” Thievery says soothingly. “And if for some reason you are not able to keep it, you may bequeath it to someone else.”
I struggle against the vines.
“Poor earnest mortal,” says the red-haired woman. “It is a fine thing to enter the realm of the gods, but how do you propose to return? There is no way home for you, not anymore. You left behind your body by our Herrath temple, but that body has been taken. Were you to return the same way you came, your spirit would last for mere seconds in the mortal realm, like a fish in air, desperate to rejoin your body. In the space of a few human breaths, your spirit would vanish. Child, you asked merely for Nirrim’s heart, when you should have asked as well for the ability to return home with it.”
“She made her choice.” The god of thieves lifts his hand to his mouth. He touches his tongue to the pink mist. I see it shudder, and the shudder echoes through me. I try to cry out, to protest that this is unjust, but the vines have knitted into a metal gag in my mouth. “Well?” says the god of thieves. “Who is it? Make yourself known, oath-breaker. Claim your mortal child.”
A god steps forward. It is the first god I saw once I entered this realm, the one with long hair like silver water, like mercury.
The god of thieves grins. “I should have known it was you,” he says to the god. “Well, well. Thank you for being honest just this once, my dear god of lies.”