She hadn’t died, though. And ten years later, only echoes of that excruciating pain remained, a reminder of the penance she must endure because she had been too eager, too curious, too questioning. And though the pain never truly went away, she’d grown used to it—except in times of exhaustion, when the pain seemed to double in intensity and she was consumed by a craving she couldn’t name or satisfy.
Finally, she reached the massive pergola at the Palace of Fine Arts. Her footsteps echoed on the sidewalk as she slowed to a walk, sucking in deep lungfuls of air.
The soft gurgling of the fountain sounded like music. The air grew thick with the scent of flowers. For a moment she closed her eyes and inhaled. It reminded her so much of home. Regret burned her throat.
She threaded her way along the path that wound between rows of looming columns. Across the lagoon, Corinthe could see warm lights shining out of the windows that lined the buildings across Lyon Street, casting dazzling reflections over the surface of the water.
She watched it, mesmerized by the way the colors danced across the surface. This was her favorite time of night, when the day was put to rest under a sky streaked with deep purples and reds.
The sound of low voices startled Corinthe. She quickly ducked behind a column as a couple of teens wandered into view—a guy and a girl, arm in arm. A dog trotted happily in front of them, sniffing, tongue wagging.
Every few steps, the couple stopped and kissed.
Kissed. A word—a concept—she had never known until she came here, to this world.
She watched the boy’s hand move up the back of the girl’s white peasant blouse and into her hair. A strange tightening sensation gripped Corinthe’s gut. It was the same feeling she’d had when the boy touched her in the car today. She turned away and pressed a hand to her stomach.
She heard the light pitter-patter of paws on stone, the jangle of a bell, and suddenly the dog had rounded the column and stood looking at her, panting.
Corinthe broke into a grin. She crouched down and with her free hand stroked the dog’s fur, kissed its wet nose, inhaled the dog-skin.
“Hey, boy,” she whispered quietly. She could sense the life, the joy, moving just below her fingertips, flowing hot through its body, but she was careful not to draw any of it.
In Pyralis, she had known and seen many animals, but she had never had one as a pet. Nothing in Pyralis belonged to anyone else, and yet everything, and everyone, belonged to the great order. Here, in Humana, she found that animals were drawn to her. It was as though they shared a common understanding, a common language of need that couldn’t be expressed in human words.
The dog woofed as Corinthe stroked its head. From the other side of the columns, a girl cried out, “Sammy! Sammy!” And the dog peeled away from Corinthe and disappeared, responding to its owner’s call.
Corinthe straightened up and listened for the sound of their retreating footsteps. When she peeked out several minutes later, they were gone.
She hurried to the middle of the rotunda. The recessed lighting pulsed softly in the honeycomb ceiling. The lagoon winked at her through the arches, between breaks in the shrubs, and gold rippled across its surface. She began to relax.
Almost done.
She walked to the farthest arch, the one overlooking the lagoon, and stopped. A low buzzing filled the air, too quiet for any human to hear: the sizzle and pop of tiny Messengers dissolving into the water. The firefly’s wings batted furiously against the soft flesh of her palm. She breathed a sigh of relief and opened her fingers to let the small spirit free.
The Messenger zipped straight up and joined thousands of others like it. They looked like miniature shooting stars cascading from the sky as they plummeted into the still water. There was no splash as they hit—only the slight hiss of their tiny lights extinguishing. After a few seconds, weightless opaque marbles bobbed to the surface in their places and gently floated away, disappearing into the darkness.
She felt the familiar ache of a memory, and for a moment, she was wading into the river of Pyralis again, like she did all those years ago. Back then Corinthe and her sister Fates would sort through the marbles, finding the murky, imperfect ones as the others flowed past and off the edge of the waterfall. The purple twilight made her skin glow as she swept her fingers across the glistening surface, sorting through the marbles bobbing in the lazy currents.
Most destinies would be fulfilled on their own, but the clouded marbles, the damaged ones that she and her sister Fates gathered, needed extra attention. These she would give to the Messengers. Though she never knew what happened after that, she knew that she was special—that her actions, and the actions of her sisters, kept the universe in balance.
It had been their job to sort the imperfect marbles from the river and deliver them to the Messengers, but she and her sister Fates had made it a game, too: whoever could find the most in a day won.
Her sister Fates: Alexia, Alessandra, Beatrice, Brienne, Calyssa … She wondered whether they ever thought her name.
Corinthe felt the sharp tug of longing. She knew that the lagoon must contain a Crossroad, a way back to Pyralis; that was how the Messengers traveled between worlds. Often she had fantasized about swimming out, trying to follow them home.
Would her sisters cry with joy? Would they even remember her after all this time?
She could do nothing but wait. She had been banished for flouting the laws of the universe once. She could not go back to Pyralis until the Unseen Ones permitted it.
So instead, she stood at the edge of the lagoon and watched, wondering momentarily about the other fireflies, about the fates that had been fulfilled—most of them without any help at all.
During her first few days in Humana—what the humans called Earth—Miranda had taken her out to the lagoon just before the sun rose. They watched silently as two Messengers flickered green in the dawn and dove straight into the water in front of them. The light went out and weightless marbles bobbed up to the surface in their place.
“In the morning we collect them.” Miranda scooped up the marbles and handed them to Corinthe. “And at night we send back the ones you’ve fulfilled.”
“Fulfilled?” Corinthe had asked. That was before she’d heard of the Executors and what was required of them. That was before she’d learned she had become one of them herself.
Corinthe had looked at the marbles cupped in her hands. They were murky, and instantly she knew: these marbles had been sorted by her sister Fates and brought here by the Messengers. And she had known, too, that she was no longer a Fate.
“You have a new job here in Humana,” Miranda said, as though reading her mind. “There aren’t many marbles today, but some mornings there will be dozens—and those are the days you’ll need to work quickly.”
Miranda explained that when the universe was particularly in balance, there were fewer marbles arriving in the human world. It meant that destiny was taking place according to the natural order.
“Are those the other marbles in Pyralis? The ones that fall off the edge of the waterfall?”
“Don’t think about them,” Miranda said gently. “It’s not your concern.” But Corinthe did think about them—more and more as the years in Humana passed. Those marbles were deaths, and births, and falling in love; they were accidents and chance meetings.
It shouldn’t matter, really. Her job as Executor was to carry out orders, not to consider the humans affected. Still, she always found the marbles riveting. Such tiny vessels, they held immense lives, immense possibilities.