Corinthe shook her head, bearing the pain in silence. Miranda smiled encouragingly as she cleaned the wound. As Corinthe watched Miranda’s careful hands work, she felt relieved and grateful to have a Guardian who was this thoughtful, this diligent. Without Miranda, she could not possibly have survived her exile.
Miranda then tipped a second bottle over her palm, and several dead butterflies fell out. With her thumb, she crushed them and rubbed the dusty powder into the wound on Corinthe’s face. For a moment, they stood in silence, and Corinthe forced all of her questions and doubts—still thudding in her chest, behind her rib cage—down and back. All except one.
“How much longer will it be?” Corinthe asked. “I’ve been stuck here for years.”
Miranda turned and blew the last of the powder from her fingers. Then she quietly said, “I’ve heard whispers between worlds. If the Unseen Ones are happy with your next two assignments …” She let her words trail off, let the hint hover between them. She smiled as she reached into her pocket. “Your new task. Tomorrow, at the Mission Creek Harbor.” She held out a marble.
Corinthe took the marble and gazed into its murky center. Would it be a new death, she wondered, so soon after the last one? Inside the marble, images swirled: Lots of teenagers laughing. A party. Tiny lights winked—the harbor seen from a distance. Boats bobbed in the dark water. The image shifted again, and Corinthe saw two humans kissing.
Corinthe didn’t understand assignments like this—coincidences, encounters, romance. Death was cleaner, more direct. But love? The concept eluded and confused her. As far as she could tell, the feeling humans termed love brought uncertainty. But her job was not to question, only to perform her duty.
“A party will be fun,” Miranda said with a smile. “You are a teenager, too, you know.”
Corinthe knew Miranda was teasing her. She was not—would not—be like the humans she dealt with.
Miranda squeezed her shoulder. “You can wear one of your new dresses.”
As much as Corinthe loathed many aspects of this world—the constant noise, the acrid scent of human desperation—one thing she did love was the way humans dressed: the colorful patterns; the shoes of different heights and styles; the looped, beaded, and jeweled bracelets, necklaces, and rings.
In Pyralis, the Fates all looked the same. They wove white dresses out of flower petals. By human standards, Corinthe supposed the Fates were beautiful. But humans liked color. And, Corinthe realized, so did she.
Not at first, though. Initially, this world had seemed blinding and chaotic. In the beginning, Corinthe had worn a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses everywhere she went in San Francisco—even on the foggiest, darkest days, and even though the lenses were far too big, at the time, for her small face. But that was just one of the many subtle things that had changed about Corinthe during the past ten years. Over time, she’d somehow gotten used to the sun, to the buzz of constant movement and bright lights. Her eyes had become less sensitive. Lately, she’d even found that she liked the electric energy of mornings; the calm, flat gaze of the noon sun; the long, open yawn of a summer afternoon; the dark silence of midnight.
She wasn’t just getting used to Humana—she was fitting into it. Taking on more and more human traits. Possibly even, she thought with a sudden pang, becoming one of them. But being here, in this world, still hurt her; she still felt a near-constant ache for Pyralis.
She closed her eyes, willing away the thought.
“You look tired. Have you been stitching in the gardens lately?” Miranda asked.
“No,” Corinthe admitted.
“Go, then. I’ll be here when you come back.” She gracefully skirted a beat-up table in the center of the room. “And bring me a handful of echinacea and some Brahma Kamal petals.”
Stitching. It was a word all their own, infused with a meaning only Miranda and Corinthe knew. As a Fate in Pyralis, Corinthe had been connected to the world around her. The air, sky, plants—everything held vitality, a force that nurtured her body. But in Humana, the earth hurt. The first time she secretly tried to draw strength from it, the suffering had been so painful it had paralyzed her for days. She had been convinced she was being punished.
But Miranda tended to a small, previously neglected garden on the north side of the rotunda that she coaxed back to life. Flowers bloomed and deep green leaves stretched out to the sun. Its brilliance had called to Corinthe, and when she found it, she ran her hands over the surface of the ground, feeling the slight vibrations emitted from below. She had sunk her little fingers into the ground, pressing hard enough to feel the cold soil fill the space under her nails. Slowly, her senses had sharpened. The vibrations grew louder and turned into a gentle, swelling hum.
Life pulsed from the ground, weakly at first, and seeped into her body. Corinthe could still feel the pain of the trees and plants outside this small, sheltered space, but it was muted. Still, the relief was indescribable. She could hear bees humming, could smell the delicate rosebushes at the edges of the garden, could feel the earth’s pulse thrumming under her fingers.
She had sat for what felt an eternity before Miranda found her.
“What are you doing?” Miranda wore that same enigmatic smile Corinthe had seen so many times since.
“I—I was just … just stitching.”
“Stitching?”
It was one of the newer words she’d learned in Humana. To thread a needle, then weave strings back and forth until they made something beautiful. It was the best word she could think of to describe a process that had always been innate, intuitive. She had stood up, suddenly ashamed, determined to explain. “Something … passes through me when I’m here. Like strands of color. They come up through my fingertips, stitch everything in my body together. I feel … stronger here.”
“It’s not wrong to do,” Miranda said gently. “We take, then we give back.” She tipped her pitcher over a cluster of yellow flowers poking out of the ground.
Now, when Corinthe needed strength, she knew she could go there without shame. It didn’t feed her the same way Pyralis did, but at least Corinthe was able to stitch enough energy to do the jobs she was tasked with.
Exhaustion caused her steps to be heavy as Corinthe made her way out of the room and turned right, down a short hall that led to a shorter flight of steep steps. On the landing, a thick wooden door, barely a foot wide, swung open on silent hinges. The sun was gone. The sky was an inky nighttime blue, and the stars were beginning to float out of the dark.
The door opened directly into a small garden. The space was tucked at the back of the rotunda, away from the wide pathways for tourists and joggers. The garden was concealed from sight by a wall of tall, thick hedges that Miranda had planted years ago.
Though Corinthe sometimes heard voices pass close by, no one had pushed their way through the thick foliage to discover her yet. At least, not while she’d been there.
Her oasis was small, maybe five feet by five feet, but it was bursting with life. Brilliantly colored flowers crowded the ground, snaked up the trellises, burst like miniature songs from the deep, long grasses. Here, it smelled like heaven—another human concept Corinthe had learned only recently.
It smelled like Pyralis. Its scent defined who she once was, and who she would be again.
Another thing she had to thank Miranda for.
“Hello,” she whispered, and sat down in the middle of the garden, where a small circular clearing had been made, just large enough to accommodate Corinthe. She brushed her fingers over delicate blossoms and inhaled the heady scent her touch released.