“Majesty, how can we serve you?” she asked him, though I suspected she already knew.
“What is your gift, Mother Gwyn?” Tiras asked, bestowing the title with obvious respect.
“I see things others cannot. I know things others do not. And I recognize the Gifted, Highness,” she said without artifice.
You are a seer? I interrupted, surprised.
She smiled at me, as though my voice in her head was pleasing.
“My ears are not as sharp as they once were, but I hear you perfectly.”
I bowed again. It is good to be heard.
“I am a Teller, as are you, my queen,” Gwyn continued, answering my original question. “Though the things I see I cannot change. I can’t command the wind or water. But I know when a storm is coming.”
“What is the king’s gift, Mother Gwyn?” Sorkin pressed her gently, steering the conversation to the matter of most importance. He wanted to know if Tiras was sincere.
She tipped her head and studied Tiras, taking note of his golden eyes and his pale hair. “His gift is strange,” she reflected.
“Aren’t they all?” Kjell cut in acerbically.
The old woman simply smiled and nodded at the bristling captain of the king’s guard. “Indeed, good man. But your gift is not simply your ability to change, Majesty,” she said, directing her words to Tiras once again. He raised his brows and glanced at me.
“Your gift is your will,” she said. I could attest to that. “People obey you,” she continued. “They yield to your demands. Even your brother, who bows to no one, would prostrate himself before you if you asked him.”
Kjell scoffed but extended his hand, palm forward, as if to keep the woman at a distance. She closed her eyes briefly and almost sniffed the air, reminding me of Boojohni, before she opened her eyes and regarded Kjell patiently.
“The gift of the Healer is the easiest to deny, especially among those who are comfortable with war and suspicious of love. There is power in you, young man,” she said softly, but she let Kjell be, and let us all make what we would of her words.
Throughout the long afternoon, the Gifted arrived in small groups, as if the parade was being carefully controlled. We didn’t know where they came from. We didn’t ask. No gift was an exact replica of another. Each was different, each unique.
And the display was truly staggering.
The Changers and the Spinners were most eager to share. Healing was a harder gift to demonstrate, and the Tellers impossible to verify. The future hadn’t happened yet, and none seemed to be able to use their words the way I did.
A man the size of a boulder, who had to stoop to enter the house, spun stones into bread and fed us all. A child spun cotton into coal with a flick of his wrist. We watched a woman spin Kjell’s sword into a length of rope, and a rope into a snake. I jumped back, startled.
“It is not a real snake,” the Spinner laughed.
I watched it coil around itself and raised my eyebrows in question. It certainly looked real.
“I can turn one object into another. But I cannot create life where there is no life. It is simply the appearance of life.”
“What do you mean?” Tiras asked, and Sorkin explained.
“Some say that the Volgar were created when a lonely spinner attempted to turn vultures into humans. It can’t be done. The Volgar may have human parts, but they don’t have human hearts. They have no souls or conscience. No ability to reason or love. There is no virtue. Only instinct. They simply became a different sort of beast.”
“But the vultures are living things . . . unlike the rope,” Kjell interjected.
Sorkin picked up the snake, and without warning, he pulled its head off. The frayed edges of the rope stuck out from the scaly body of the snake where the head had just been.
“It cannot strike. It does not eat. It does not sleep. It does not have the instincts or the inner workings of a snake. It is a rope, animated by a touch. A man can become a beast. But a beast cannot become a man.”
The room grew silent, and Tiras turned his eagle eyes on me for a heartbeat. “What makes a man a beast?” he asked quietly, addressing Sorkin but still looking at me.
“His choices.”
“Not his gift?” Kjell asked bitterly.
“Not his gift,” Sorkin answered. “What a man does with his gift is the true measure.”
Kjell had no response and the demonstrations continued. Lu, a little girl with green eyes and inky black hair became a kitten that scampered at my feet. A troll with a long, red beard became a goat that neighed incessantly and bit everything in sight. A boy named Hazael became a horse, all coltish legs and flowing mane, and a mother of three became whatever animal she wished, morphing from one to the other at the king’s request.
They could all hear me—Spinners, Changers, Healers, and Gwyn, the only other Teller in the room.
For every person who shared their gift, I shared mine as well, spinning a rhyming spell that made the dishes wash themselves, a sock darn the hole in its toe, a fire start, and a turtle fly. They clapped and marveled and begged for more, and I acquiesced, hoping it would be enough to soothe fears and build trust. But Sorkin was not deterred. At the end of the day, he made his demand of the king.
“We have shown you our abilities. Now you must show us what you can do,” the old Healer demanded, his voice soft but adamant.
I do not want him to change, I protested, raising my voice so all those present could hear me. The gathered Gifted looked at me in surprise.
Every time he changes, it is harder for him to return, I explained, and shocked murmurs and unspoken questions rose in the air like dusty moths. I brushed at them, denying them and wishing them away.
“Lark,” Tiras murmured, and I knew before I looked at him that my protestations were useless.
“I’ve given my word,” Tiras said.
“Perhaps when he changes, Sorkin and I will be able to better understand why there is pain,” Shenna offered, reaching out her hand to the king. Sorkin moved close as well, and Tiras bowed his head, as if receiving a blessing instead of invoking a transformation. They began to hum together—Sorkin and Shenna—but the mellow, low vibration Tiras’s body had emitted earlier in the day was now a high ringing. The Healers struggled to recreate it, straining for the pitch. Shenna started to shake her head helplessly, even as she breathed into the note, strengthening it, matching it.
Then Tiras roared, throwing back his head and howling like his heart was being pulled from his chest, fighting the pull, only to be dragged away. Like millions upon millions of dust particles gathering and bursting and rearranging themselves, he disintegrated and became something else. His white hair clung to his head and neck like a silken hood, obscuring a face that suddenly ceased to exist. Then wings unfurled, even as his body melded into the air.
It was glorious and ghastly, triumphant and tragic all at once. I fought the urge to weep and throw myself into the space where he had been that I might become what he was.
Shenna and the old Healer fell back, as if they too had never seen such a thing, and Kjell opened the cottage door.
Unlike the other Changers—the kitten, the horse, the goat, and the mother who changed effortlessly—my eagle king soared up into the cerulean sky, and he did not return.
Lost.
The eagle’s word made me ache.
No. Not lost. I know who you are, I pressed, stroking the feathers on his breast.
Lark.
My name rose from him, and I knew he was telling me the same. He knew who I was too. He was still Tiras, beneath it all, and that was almost worse.
“The king is asking for you, Milady,” Pia announced, popping into my chamber in the early afternoon a week later. My hands froze mid-air, the book I held slipping from my fingers. “He asked that you be present for a meeting with his advisors.”