Luna the Fifth landed lightly on the hard packed earth and well worn stones of the garden path, and Betani slipped off of his thorax, schoolbag in hand. She ran forward, along the lines of lavender and up the crooked porch stairs. Luna still beat her to the house, landing parallel on the outside of the living room window and spreading his big green wings out like curtains to cover it. He liked to sit quiet like a tapestry, then flutter away whenever someone tried to touch him. It was his own personal joke.
There was no one here for him to play it on.
Betani dug in her pocket, pulled out the key, and unlocked the front door. She dropped her bag, threw off her shoes, and ran deeper into the house. There on the kitchen counter were the things she had set out that morning—the bottle of oil, the drying parsley, the flour, the salt and the pepper—the four places set at the kitchen table.
Running over to the cabinet, she pulled out the largest saucepan. She stood there for a moment, staring at the small dark reflection in the center of it, the black halo of her own hair standing on short ends, like it could reach out and make up for all the space she did not take up. Then she took a steadying breath and set the pan down on the stove. She had an onion to chop.
Potato soup was not difficult to make so long as you prepped for it correctly, and Betani had spent several hours last night mashing up every potato she could get her hands on. The fruit of her labor was chilling now in the icebox. That was half the work.
After Betani chopped the onion, she simmered it in a saucepan with oil. Once it had yellowed, she stirred in flour and salt and pepper in small portions, careful not to let it clump. Then came the water, then the cheese and the milk and the mashed potatoes. With each ingredient, the line of the liquid grew closer and closer to the edge of the pot. Betani's stirring grew slower and slower so that she would not jostle it over the edge.
When the soup was finished, Betani hoisted the simmering pot in mitted hands and carried it over to trivet in the center of the table. She was just gathering her breath, hands resting on her hips as she surveyed her work, when she heard something slam into the back porch screen door. She rushed to open it. A dragon—not quite as big as a cat—lay crumpled on the wooden floorboards. As Betani watched, he gathered himself and jumped back up into the air to hover by her face and proffer an envelope.
Betani held out her arm for the dragon to land on and ushered him into the living room. She had a feeling it had a long flight. Once she had situated the dragon on a pile of couch pillows, she took the letter and ripped open the envelope, not bothering to read the return address. She already knew who it was from.
Betani! the letter read, How's it going back home? Did Luma hatch from his cocoon alright? We finished resealing the glowstone mines, and I just made it to Aerbakh, where the sky giants are from. Mom and Dad were supposed to be waiting for me here, but it turns out that there's another toad blight back in Eierdale, and they went on ahead to deal with it. I'll be right behind them, but I wanted to let you know what we're up to so you don't worry, and in case you decide to come after us. See you in a couple of weeks!
Lillei had forgotten to sign off, but Betani knew her handwriting. The letters were big and bold and sloping, like they could barely slow themselves down long enough to attach to the page. She looked up—across the room to the mantel, where the Oaken Focus hung, twisted and dusty. The staff had belonged to her grandfather. It was there for her, if she wanted it.
She didn't.
Betani ran upstairs, just long enough to grab a paper and an envelope and scrawl out a response. She knew Lillei would be gone by the time it reached Eierdale. She sent it away with the dragon anyway.
Back in the empty kitchen, Betani ladeled herself a bowl of soup, breaking through the film that had gathered at the surface of the pot. It splattered a little, and when she brushed the droplets off the table with her finger, the liquid was lukewarm. Mechanically, she sprinkled the chopped parsley on top as a garnish. Then she picked up her bowl and spoon and went out to sit on the steps of the back porch.
The sun was setting invisibly, hidden behind the tall trees that lined the yard. In the dark space under their boughs, Betani could see the willow lights beginning to bob. She took a spoonful of her soup. Then she spit it out and set the bowl down on the step beside her. It had gone sour with her mood.
The color seeped out of the sky, and the air stirred with the fading of the summer, and the crickets tuned up their instruments and sang under the cover of the long grass. The clouds blew gently forward and away, like a blanket slowly sliding off a bed, and the stars poked through the expanse behind. Betani tucked her skirt tighter around her knees. The nights were getting cooler.
Suddenly, one of the stars broke out of its place and shot forward, pulling light behind. Betani jumped up and ran down across the backyard, waving her arms like she did when she saw her friend Phania from across the lunchroom, like she could flag it down. "Hey!" she shouted, "Look, I’m calling you!"
The star flew forward, resolute. Maybe it hadn't heard.
"I want a wish!" Betani yelled, pulling to a stop near the end of the yard. If she went any farther, she would come under the lee of the trees and lose her view. "Hey star—give me a boy! I want to hold someone when I'm lonely!"
The sky was impossibly far, and the creatures that hailed from it ate distance like humans ate air. But from the small swath of the clearing, the star seemed to inch like a water snail, slowly sliding over the edge of the treeline and out of sight.
Betani stood alone under the darkness, the trees witness to the echo of her words. The grass shifted around her shins, flowing like hair underwater. She shivered, and the treetops shivered with her, the leaves clapping together like cymbals.
"I'll do it," the wind said, and the words came with no sound, but they still raised gooseflesh on Betani's bare arms, "I'll give you a star boy to carry, to stand by you when you're old."
Betani did not do magic, but she watched the creeks that clogged and grew tadpoles, and the squirrels that dared each other into recklessness, and the trees that knew the weather like an old lover, and most of all the bugs that rose and fell and were reborn with each season. The lifeblood of the world pumped steadily in the cool clay beneath her, and she had spent her whole life with palms pressed down to feel its rhythm. And maybe the world told her things, or maybe all that stored knowledge pooled together and spilled over without her meaning, or maybe she was just crazy, but sometimes Betani knew things that she shouldn't. She had known her family would not make it back for dinner. She had known when Luna was going to finish his metamorphosis. She had known what she was seeing when that half blighted toad jumped across her path, white spores still buried in its back, and she had carried it home to die in a terrarium before the plague could spread.
So when the wind's words pressed their shape firm and clear in her mind, like the outline of a winter cookie in even dough, she believed them without question.
Betani rounded the corner onto the main square of Pinesville and almost ran into someone. She jumped back out of reflex, hands flying to steady the caterpillar hanging around her neck who would be Luna the Eleventh if he survived his cocoon. Then she looked up at the person she had nearly knocked over.
"Betani!" Phania said, her copper face breaking into a grin. She had already set her staff against the wall of the wooden building behind them, and with her free hands she reached out and clasped Betani by the arm. "Where have you been? I've barely seen you since graduation! Have you just been sitting up in that house alone?"
"I've been out and about," Betani said. It was true, though her circuit was a little smaller than other people's. There was an invasive growth of ironvine on the far side of the Grey’s point, and old lady Hagitha’s garden needed tidying, and there were always the moths to see to.
"You should come over," Phania said, "You must get lonely. And I can pick your brain—I bet you could teach me loads about magic and—"
"No," Betani said, taking Phania's hands in her own. "I mean, I'd love to come over. But you already know more about magic than me."
Phania made a face then, like she was looking down at a trail of mud on a pristine floor, but what she said was, "Are you busy now? I'm wanted in the red corn fields south of town—there's some blemish there that the mayor's asked me to take a look at.”
"I'm headed to the library," Betani said, “I miss school—it was so easy to see you every day. Come by my house anytime. I'll make biscuits or tea or something."
"I will come," Phania said. She squeezed Betani's hands, and then picked up her staff again and pressed past her, running down the street toward the brilliant fields.
Betani stood and watched her friend go, long dark hair bouncing with her movement, until she rounded the next bend and disappeared. Then she continued down the road to the small library.
She was here to look for information on ironvine. She already knew how to fight it after last year, but it was a new piece in the pattern of the seasons. It hadn’t come when she was a child. If it operated on a longer cycle, like the screaming pill bugs that spent thirty seven years in their larval state, then she would need a more distant perspective than her lifetime. There might be a forgotten manuscript in one of the library’s many filing cabinets. Hagitha would let her look through them.
Running up the stone steps to the entrance, Betani threw open the library door. It slammed before it hit the wall, and she caught it as it drifted back toward her. Behind it, a young man was sprawled on the ground.
“Oh no!” Betani said, dropping to her knees to right the coffee cup that was spilling its contents over the ground.
The man sat up, rubbing his forehead with a pale, freckled hand. "It's fine," he said, "I wasn't watching where I was going either."
"There's napkins in the back room," Betani said, jumping up again, "In the third drawer in the cabinet under the window—I'll fetch them!"
"Hang on," the man said, standing up as well, "I don't think you can go back there."
Betani had already turned away from him. She was running now, skirt swirling as she rounded the front desk and scooted past Hagitha to get to the door behind her. The napkins were there in the cabinet, just where she had left them after the last new year's party. Grabbing a fistfull of them, Betani spun on her heel and ran back for the lobby.
The man met her at the door behind the desk, catching it in his hand as she flung it open. "Who are you?" he said, looking a little amazed, "You've slammed three doors and Miss Hagitha isn't even yelling at you."
"Oh honey," Hagitha said, not even looking up from the record book she was studying at the front desk, "Betani can do what she wants."
"I'm just cleaning up," Betani explained, ducking under the man's arm and running back toward the spilled coffee. Bunching up the napkins in her hand, she dropped back to the ground and pressed them into the stain on the floor. If she was quick enough, then she could blot it up before it set.
"Need any help?" the man said. He was standing over her now, holding another stack of napkins.
Betani reached up and grabbed one out of his hands. “Thanks.”
"I'm Ki," the man said, crouching to press another napkin against the carpet. He wasn't very good at blotting. "Ki Vahn, from the violet edge. I've just moved south."
"You're from the mountains?" Betani asked, "I don't suppose you've seen any ironvine up there? I'm hoping it hasn't grown that far yet."
"I—uh," Ki said, "I don't know what that is."
"That's good," Betani said, crumpling up the wet napkin in her hand and reaching for a new one. "I'm Betani. D'Agia."
"D'Agia?" Ki asked. From the corner of her eye, Betani saw his hands go still. "D'Agia like the fireblossom mage? Mathra D'Agia?"
"She’s my mother," Betani said, stomach clenching. Her family's mage names always made her feel strange inside. It wasn't that she begrudged them their careers—they did a lot of good in the world—but the words felt incomplete. She would have liked to make them her own titles: Mathra the window gardener. Di’Nand, taker of long walks. Lillei, the one who laughs.
"Well you're not the Blizzard Wizzard—I'm guessing that's your father actually." Ki said cupping his chin in one hand. Then he snapped his fingers. "Hang on, are you the one who charmed the frost dragon?"
"That was my Lillei," Betani said, "My older sister."
"Huh," Ki said, resting his hands on his knees. "So there's actually another one of you, a whole seperate D'Agia—and you've just been in Pinesville this whole time, minding your own business?"
Betani scraped the soaked napkins off of the ground. "I should get you another coffee," she said, standing up to look for a trash can.
"Maybe I should get you one," Ki said, jumping up to take the dirty napkins from her hands.
A familiar pinching pressed into her arm. "No, stop that!" Betani shouted.
Ki's face fell. "Oh," he said, "Sorry, I didn't mean to—"
"Not you," Betani said, reaching down to grab her caterpillar's face. "It's Luna—I'm so sorry for yelling—but she's eating my sleeve again."
Ki looked down, and then he flinched. "Holy cow your scarf is alive!"
Extracting her shredded sleeve from Luna's mouth, Betani held up her arm toward Ki. "Pet her!" she said.
Ki's eyes widened, but he reached out and stroked Luna behind the neck. "It's kinda fuzzy," he said, "I actually—I see how this could be a good scarf."
"I'm glad," Betani said, pushing the dirty napkins into Ki's free hand. "So when do I get coffee?"
It was dark outside, but the sidewalk was lit by a series of fireballs encased in glass, suspended on poles or hanging from the eaves to illuminate shop signs. The air had turned sharp as the sun set, but Betani had her face wrapped in a scarf and her hand wrapped around Ki's.
"So you never explained the wyrm," Ki said, breath fogging with the words. He might have been leading her somewhere once, but by now they had gone around the square three times, just talking. Maybe he was afraid of arriving, that if this walk ever ended he would have to come up with a new excuse to keep holding her hand.
"That's not true," Betani said. She swung her arm back and forth, dragging Ki's arm along with the motion. "I've told you lots of things about Luna. You even remembered some of it."
Ki bit his lip, the way he always did when he was concentrating. "Well yes—but what I wanted to say—is Luna immortal?"
Betani snorted. "Didn't you see him dead at the end of summer? I know I showed him to you."
"That's just it!" Ki said, throwing his free hand up in exasperation, "I saw Luna dead—but I've heard you talking about seeing him again come spring. So is this creature like a phoenix, or—"
"It's not the same one!" Betani said, doing everything in her power not to completely dissolve into giggles. "Luna always lays eggs, and I save them through the winter, and in the spring I keep one."
"How do you pick between them?"
Betani shook her head. "I don't get a say in it. Luna moths don't live in packs, so when they hatch from their cocoons they fly off in every direction. I just keep the one that doesn’t leave."
They reached the corner of the square again, and Ki pulled her after him as he turned the corner to walk along a new side. Betani stopped walking, tugging Ki to a stop. Something about their movement or the changing angle of the shop lights had caught her eye.
"What is it?" Ki said.
Betani stepped to the side, holding Ki's hand up out of his shadow. There was something shining on his skin. "You're freckles," she said, "Are they glowing?"
Ki laughed, but it was the same sort of tone Betani had heard stick in her own throat, when strangers asked her about her family. "You know the yellow wizard's tower in the capital?"
"I've heard of it," Betani said. She relaxed her arm and her stance, allowing Ki to lead them down the sidewalk again.
"They're my ancestors," Ki explained, "They come from my mountains—that's where their gold and their magic came from. They dug it up and took it with them when they moved. Only, they left some things behind. There are traces still, in the land and in the people."
"In you," Betani said, pulling closer to his side. She was in the business of holding things that had been passed over.
The sparklers broke out of the darkness in strings to light their path. Betani hung with one arm draped around Ki's shoulders and the other trying to manage the thick green folds of her wedding dress as he carried her. There were willow lights in the distance, and in lines around them stood almost everyone Betani had ever known, and a few people she had only just met. It was a good party—it had been a good party—but she was ready to go home.
Light flashed in the distance, orange and red, the shape of it hidden by the old oak that grew in the town square.
"Put me down," Betani said, squirming in her husband's arms.
"Okay?" Ki said, but he set her gently on the ground.
As soon as her feet touched cobblestone, Betani was running, rounding the shadowy outline of the tree trunk. Standing behind it, hands on her knees and brilliant robes faintly smoking, was her sister.
Lillei looked up at her, and Betani suddenly realized that she was the taller one now. "I didn't make it, did I?" Lillei said, shoulders slumping, "The ceremony is already over—you must be just about to leave."
Words catching in her throat, Betani reached forward and embraced the sister—the one who had never quite managed to be there for her, but had never given up on trying.
"I think I'll depict a different phase of the flame frog's life-cycle on each corner of the square," Betani explained, pointing down at the diagram she had unrolled on the floor of the porch.
Ki crouched down beside her, hands clasped around his evening coffee, "What is this?"
"For the Sunlight Festival," Betani said, chewing on the end of her pencil. "Normally the Pinesville Mage is in charge of decorations, but Phania's going to be busy this year, and so the Mayor asked me if I could pull something together. The shop owners decorate their own stores, so I only have to do the square. I think I'll use chalk."
"Hmmm," Ki said absently, unrolling the curled corner of the diagram to see the pattern sketched out on the border, "Won't chalk rub off if people walk over it?"
"I thought about using paint, but I think that's too permanent," Betani said, "The chalk might smudge a little, but at least it will wash out if it rains. I just need to hope that it doesn't rain during the festival!"
"Can I ask you something?"
"You just did," Betani said, but she looked up from her work.
Ki was staring up at the roof. For a moment Betani worried that one of the solar panels had come loose—but there wasn't enough focus in his gaze for his attention to be caught in something so close.
"What is it?" Betani said. Maybe he hadn't seen her turn to look at him.
"Have you ever," Ki started, biting his lip, "Are you—happy here? Really happy? Didn't you ever wish for something more?"
"Yeah," Betani said. It was dusk, and the first star had just poked through the shallow sky behind her husband. "I did once."
Betani knelt down on the cobblestone and rummaged around in her apron pocket for the right piece. She had marked out all her lines already—the only thing left was to color and shade. It was the more time consuming task, but it took less thought, and there was a comfort in the rhythm of the motion and a pleasant kind of ache growing in the muscles in her arm.
Luna the Fourteenth was perched on the window of the fudge shop behind her. If she didn't move soon, Betani was going to have to go inside and ask if her pet was being a bother. She would have asked Ki to corral her, but she hadn't seen him yet. Maybe he was only planning to come tomorrow, when she had finished her decorations. The Sunlight Festival would last for a couple of days.
A dragon zipped by—faster than a messenger dragon usually bothered to move. Maybe this was a young one, still enchanted by the sky, not yet worn down by the length of the world. It shot across the square, landing on the Mayor's shoulder, bright teal wings shining like a beetle's.
Betani looked back down at her drawing. She had finished the egg and moved on to the tadcoal corner. The flame frog did not catch fire until it grew and emerged from the water, which meant that the color of this segment was controlled less by the frog itself and more by the things Betani had placed in the water behind it. Most creeks and ponds around here were made of mud, but that color was covered by the dirt tracked between the stones that composed her canvas. Betani had decided to focus instead on the idea of water, filling the corner with multicolored bubbles and blue-green swirls.
Someone placed their hand on her shoulder, and Betani looked up to see Hagitha there, staring down at her intently. This was not unusual. Hagitha has so perfected her silencing librarian's glare over the years that she sometimes had difficulty turning it off.
"What brings you outside?" Betani said, adjusting the brim of her straw hat so that she could see her friend's face more clearly. "The sun is still up. I thought you said you were allergic to the summertime."
"Betani," Hagitha said, no trace of mirth in her tone. "There's been a missive from the capital, about the canyon cutters."
Betani turned back to her drawing. "Those creatures don't live near here—that's wizard business. You know I don't care about that kind of news."
"Betani, honey," Hagitha said, "You'll care about this."
Betani strode up to the mayor, colored chalks still clenched in one hand. The crowd gathered around him grew silent in patches as people saw her coming and stepped quietly out of her way. Soon she was standing there in an empty place, the townsfolk hollowed out around her like a doughnut, the Mayor standing in the center with her, a dragon on his shoulder and an unfolded paper in his hand.
"What happened," Betani demanded.
The mayor gulped. "D'Agia—I was wondering when we would attract your attention. You see, out west, there are these great rolling beasts with bladed fins to direct their—"
"I know what canyon cutters are," Betani interrupted, "Their natural predator, the windwyrms, were hunted to extinction seventy years ago. Tell me what happened."
"Right," the mayor said, producing a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe at his balding forehead. "Well, you see, it seems that the canyon cutters have been slicing up the ground out west. It's making farming very difficult. The wizards have been trying to find a way to control the damages. A group of them went down into a canyon to investigate—to try to see if there was some way to seal the ground back up. And—well—they were successful. The ground caved in over them."
Twilight was falling now, sharpening the light of the shop windows around them and stretching the shadows under their feet. Behind the buildings, in the tall grass and the trees, Betani could hear the lonely grating legs of the summer bugs beginning to play.
"Who was there," Betani said, as afraid of ignorance as she was of the answer, "Who was there?"
"The Moonglow Mage and the Aspenrise Sorcerer—and the Fireblossom, your mother—"
"And do we know that they're dead?" Betani said, "Or is anybody trying to dig—"
"Yes," the Mayor said, "Their deaths were confirmed. D'Agia, I—"
"Thank you," Betani said, each consonant clipping like a newly sharpened sickle, "I have to—I'm going to go. My moth is somewhere—I need to find my moth."
"She's on the fudge shop window!" someone shouted from the crowd, and Betani hadn't needed the direction, but she was thankful for the excuse to turn and run away.
Betani clung to Luna the Fourteenth's thorax as she flew over the black treetops. Above them, the stars were slowly pressing out into the evening sky. They were going home. They needed to go home. Everything was tangled together and pressing down in the space between her ribs. If she could throw open the door and run into the warm light—if she could throw herself into her husband's arms—well, things might not get any better, but the knotting inside her could run out and settle down, and the two of them would stand unshaken in the end.
Luna touched down on the garden path, and Betani hopped over her thorax, chalk in hand. She ran down the hard worn stones of the garden path, between the lavender blooming from the cracks in the edges of the rock. Climbing the porch steps, she dug around in her pocket for the key and unlocked the front door. Quietly, she stepped inside. The lights were off in the living room, but she could see warmth in the edge of the shadows. There were voices in the distance, and when she stepped forward she saw that the kitchen door was open and the back porch light was on.
The window thumped behind her. Luna had settled into her place, spreading out her tapestry wings right where they belonged.
Her voice caught in her throat, Betani crept forward, careful of her feet, the way she moved when she came downstairs to get water at night. There were two figures on the porch, two voices that she knew. Phania stood with a mug clutched in her hands, visiting just like she had promised. Beside her, Ki reached forward to brush a strand of her hair behind her ear.
When she was a child, Betani had grabbed books from the library shelves based on the color of their covers, discovering the contents only when she reached them page by page. Sometimes in fiction the characters would draw closer and closer to each other as they talked, until Betani felt like she was intruding on them and slammed the covers closed.
There was no book now, but the same feeling came upon her so strong that Betani was out on the front garden path again before she knew what her feet had been doing. Behind her, Luna was resting in her place, maybe sleeping and probably immoveable. She could not ride away down the mountain again. But there was no window for her here to press against, so she started forward again, down the rocky path and out into the gravel road.
The full moon was cresting the horizon, but the dark trees covered it up, and Betani could only notice it by the brightening sky behind. The road sloped downhill, toward the town she had come from. She was not going back there now, though her legs moved her toward it. She was going nowhere, to the endless loop of dirty paths that wound around Pinesville like a kitten's tangle of yarn. Maybe she was afraid of arriving, afraid that if this walk ever ended she would have to come up with a new excuse to keep living in the house that should have belonged to her, in the house that everyone wanted her to leave.
It was easy to move downhill, with gravity helping her, and her heart was jumping around like a dragonfly caught in honey, so she walked faster and faster, until she was running over the packed stones. The forest was a living orchestra around her, and the air hit thick and wet against her cheeks. It was too dark to see the ground clearly. Soon her foot caught against a stone and threw her down. Her palms caught the ground before her face could, and she felt the invisible pebbles grinding into her skin. She sat there for a moment, breathing heavy on her hands and knees, trying to identify the white hot crater smoking in her center. She couldn't hear herself think over the bugs.
"You!" she screamed, striking the ground with her hands again, unsure if she meant her absent mother, or her lying husband, or the air that lay around her, muggy and still.
Betani placed the onion down on the chopping block and cut off the ends with the biggest knife in the knife block. Then she stuck her fingernail under the edge and began to peel off the outermost layer of skin.
"What's the staff on the mantle for?" Ki said. She could place his position by his voice—a little behind her, between the kitchen table and the icebox.
"That's the oaken focus," Betani said, "It was my grandfather's. It pulls latent magic and presses it together to power more complex spells."
"You've never used it," Ki said.
Betani finished removing the skin and put it down on the counter beside her. Then she set the onion on the cutting board and carefully sliced it in half. "When you pull magic into a focus, it comes from somewhere. I used it once. I couldn't hear Luna for a week."
"There's a gap," Ki started, sounding unsure of himself, "In the profession, I mean. You aren't the only one missing the Fireblossom Mage. And there are very few people who could fill the gap she left behind."
"What happens if I leave?" Betani said, chopping the onion halves into quarters, "What wizard will come and stamp out the ironvine? Will they notice the toad blight before it grows? Who will keep the eggs of the Luna moths? What canyon cutters will rise when they die out?"
"Phania is leaving," Ki said, "She's going to the city to see what she can do. She's your friend, right? She could use our help."
Delicately, Betani arranged the onion quarter so that her knife would slice perpendicular to the folds in the onion that were already there. "You can help her," Betani said, and her voice came out steadier than she expected. "There's magic in your heritage too. Take the focus for yourself."
"You can't mean that," Ki said.
Betani shrugged. "I won't use it." Then she started cuting the onion into stripes.
Behind her, she heard Ki's footsteps pounding up the stairs to their bedroom. By the time she had started cutting the stripes into quarters, she heard him rummaging around in the closet, no doubt looking for the pack that was stored underneath the hanger rack.
Moving the unchopped onion to the counter, she pushed the chopped onion pieces off the board with the knife until they fell into the saucepan. She knew deep down that her husband would be gone within the week.
Betani sat at the kitchen table, drinking bitter tea that had long gone cold and feeling vaguely nauseous. In her hand was the letter that the dragon had left.
Betani, it said, I wish you were here. I wanted to have the memorial back in Pinesville, but by the time I got to the Western Wastes it had happened already. I think Dad is doing alright—he makes jokes like he used to, at least. Maybe he just doesn't want to burden me. They've given me her focus gauntlets, and I guess I've got to take them. Somebody's got to stop the canyon cutters before the whole ground falls in on itself, and I've been at this long enough to know that there will always be something after that. And there's nobody else who was close enough to Mom to know how she did what she did. But I'm still not sure I know what I'm doing. Can I really be the Fireblossom Mage?
I wish I could come home. I don't know when I'll see you again.
Betani took another sip of her tea. Lillei had forgotten to sign off.
It was dark in the kitchen. The power had been finicky for a week or two, ever since Luna the Fourteenth disappeared. Betani had a feeling that she had died on the roof, wings spread to block the solar panel, and would need to be scraped off and buried. She hadn't gone outside to check. She hadn't gone outside at all.
Gulping the last bit of her tea, Betani set her mug down on the kitchen table. Then she got a good look at it—it was the mug with the library logo, the one Ki had gotten from Hagitha, the one Phania had used when she came to visit. Betani's eyes narrowed. Slowly, she pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. Grabbing the small metal container that held her tea leaves, she walked over to the compost bin, pulled the lid off, and emptied the container inside. Then she placed the container on the counter. She walked over to the kitchen window and pulled it open, revealing the bug screen behind.
Striding back to the table, Betani picked up the mug and hurled it through the screen. It knocked a hole through the center and then shattered against the floor of the porch with a satisfying crash.
Next, Betani ran into the living room. There was a bookshelf beside the couch, half full of books that had belonged to Ki. Betani ripped them from the shelves, flinging them into a pile on the floor. Then she threw open Luna's empty window and tossed the books out onto the front porch.
Upstairs, Betani tore through the closet, flinging shirt after shirt onto the bedroom floor. The windows here overlooked the porch roof. The clothes weren't dense enough to make it over and into the yard, and Ki's shoes caught in the gutter at the edge. But it was almost autumn. The gutters would have to be cleared of leaves anyway.
In the bathroom, Betani pulled Ki's razor from the medicine cabinet and his towel from the rack. The bathroom window looked out over the uncovered back porch. There was nothing to catch them during the long drop. They landed next to the remains of the mug. Turning back, Betani crouched and reached her hand into the cabinet under the sink. Her fingers closed down on her own folded linens.
The sudden energy that had burst up in her seeped away. Betani sank down onto her knees. The last time she had washed these and hung them out to dry had been in the time before. It had been sunny that day, but not unbearably warm, and her husband had been drinking coffee on the porch and Luna had been flying in the breeze and her mother had been alive. From here it felt like another lifetime, but marked on a calendar the space would look small. It had only been a couple of weeks since Ki had left, and the festival had been a few weeks before that.
Suddenly, Betani tore the folded linens out of their stack, scattering them over the bottom of the cabinet. She pulled her hand back and began counting on her fingers. Two weeks since Ki had left. Three weeks and a bit since the festival. But she hadn't done laundry for a while before that, because she had been busy preparing for her chalk drawings. The day she was remembering had to be closer to seven or eight weeks ago.
She was at least three weeks late.
The cabinet door bumped into her arm, pushed by the draft. Betani looked up. There was a cobweb in the corner by the ceiling and a dark film growing over the shower tile. Between them, the dirty window was flung open, and the old curtains floated gently in the breeze.
"A boy," the wind continued, as if it had not noticed the span of years spliced inside their conversation, "You never asked for a man."
Betani jostled the saucepan with the chopped onions and oil inside. They would burn if she was not careful, and she didn't want to have to start over.
There was a thump against the living room window as Luna the Twenty-Fifth landed against it, spreading himself out like a friendly mold. Then the door sprung open and slammed against the wall.
"Take your boots off," Betani said, raising her voice just enough to be heard. She kept her hand on the butter pan.
Aris stomped back to the boot rack by the door. Betani heard the thump as his empty boots fell into their place.
"How was practice?" Betani said, picking up the bowl of the flour mixture at her side and pouring a little of it into the pan. The onions were yellow enough for her to begin stirring it in a bit at a time.
"It was normal," Aris said.
Unable to read the tone in his voice, Betani looked over her shoulder at him. Aris stood beside the kitchen table, dropping his backpack into an empty chair. He had his father's golden freckles, but against his mother's black skin they stood stark like the night sky.
"Don't you have a concert this weekend?" Betani said, turning back to add in some more flour.
Aris sighed and slumped his shoulders. "Of course you know about that."
Betani put her free hand on her hip. "Is that a problem?"
"No," Aris said, walking forward to peer around her at the saucepan. "It's not a problem. Just—don't do anything embarrassing."
"If you want me not to come—"
"No, no it's fine!"
Aris went silent after that, and Betani was distracted. This was the most delicate part of the soup. It was easy to pour the flour in too quickly and let it clump, or stir the sauce too slowly and let it burn.
"Penei gets to drive her father's tractor," Aris said.
"Penei has been working on a farm her entire life," Betani said, "You still don't get to drive the four-wheeler."
"That's not," Aris said, pressing his palms into his cheeks, "I'm not talking about that."
"Uh-huh," Betani said. The flour bowl was empty, so she reached out and grabbed the cup of water she had set aside.
"When are you going to teach me magic?" Aris said.
Betani jolted and poured in all the water at once. She had to take a minute to focus on stirring it in correctly, terrified that she would clump the soup. Or at least, that was the easier focus for her terror.
"Mom?" Aris said.
"I don't do magic," Betani finally managed, "But I'm sure I can find somebody to teach you. I can write to your Aunt Lillei and ask—"
"No, don't do that," Aris said, "She'd teach me wrong. I want you to apprentice me—like Penei's dad does—so that I can become the Pinesville Mage."
"I'm not a mage," Betani said, "The mayor is just confused."
"Okay whatever then," Aris said, throwing his hands in the air, "Teach me how to be a con artist so that the mayor will pay me to be a mage while I sit up here and breed bugs."
"Isn't there something you want to do?" Betani said.
Aris nodded. "Live here."
"Well," Betani said, trying not to sound like she cared, "I'm not planning to get promoted to another city. You'll have to fight me for the job."
"Nah, you'll be old," Aris said, walking around behind her to stand at the part of the counter with the ingredients laid out. "You can sit on the front porch and drink tea with Luna Five Hundred or something."
"Luna Five Hundred?!" Betani exclaimed, "How old do you think I am? Have I been practicing dark magic in secret, that you think I'm likely to become an undead?"
"Sometimes your eyes get mean," Aris admitted.
"Oh," Betani said. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt so small. "Like when?"
"Like now," Aris said, reaching forward and grabbing a handful of the mashed potatoes Betani had set aside for the soup. Before she could intervene, he had darted away from her reach and out the kitchen door.
"Polaris D'Agia!" Betani shouted. She couldn't run after him. The soup was boiling. It had to keep boiling.
Through the kitchen window, she saw Aris run down the porch steps, the handful of potato pressed to his mouth. Sighing, Betani turned off the stove and raced after him.
By the time she got out the door Aris was halfway across the yard. He was a fast kid, but Betani's legs were longer, and she had been treading over this same earth since she was his size, and the wind always pulled her forward when she ran. She caught him where the shadow of the pine trees touched the grass, wrapping her arms around his waist and scooping him up off of the ground. Aris twisted in her arms to face her.
"Those potatoes are for the—" Betani started.
Aris shoved a clump of mashed potatoes into her mouth, grinning wildly.
Startled, Betani held her breath. The grass shifted around her shins. Aris laughed and wriggled, and she held him tighter, arms quivering with the effort. The trees quivered with her, tossing in the wind, and the potato in her mouth tasted rich and sweet.