“What did you… fall in love with?” Nothing whispered, trembling with the need to know.
“Everything. It would sit for hours and watch the reflection of clouds against the mirror lake or hold bumblebees in its cupped palms to laugh at their tickling buzz, trying not to kill them. It crackled like lightning and raged down the mountain in a temper, setting fire to trees and making rabbits scream, withering flowers and scaring the wind still. It teased me. Hid my things, replacing them under cups or in my soup. It combed my hair at night. It hurt me sometimes, too. It taught me to read every language, and held threads of magic in seven hands so I could look inside the patterns. It was infinitely patient. It told me wild and tragic stories it learned when it was alive, when the Fifth Mountain was alive. It curled its fingers around my heart and said my heart was like a core of magma, heating the body of my own mountain house.”
A tear spilled over the sorceress’s lashes, then dripped raggedly down her cheek.
Nothing touched her mouth and felt her own warm breath against her fingers as the only proof she was breathing at all.
Oh, it was working. The sorceress’s story was working: Nothing wanted what she offered. To be everything described. Powerful, mercurial, funny, and patient. Tender and furious.
Who wouldn’t want to be such a thing, when such a thing was so loved by a creature like the sorceress?
Especially when what she’d always been was Nothing.
Nothing stood suddenly. “I have to go.”
The sorceress looked up at her, otherwise very still. She did not speak, though her eyes glinted. One forest green, one bone white.
Slowly the sorceress rose to her feet and glided toward Nothing. She reached out and brushed her knuckles along Nothing’s cheek, leaving trails of cold shadow-silk behind.
Nothing leaned into it, so the sorceress would know she wasn’t running away in fear or rejection. It was self-preservation. It was important that Nothing take her time. “Good night, Sorceress,” she whispered. “I want to see you in the morning.”
The sorceress offered a cool smile of acknowledgment.
Nothing gathered her skirts into her arms, lifting layers almost to her knees, and left, trailing butterflies on the crystal floor behind her.
She ran along the dark corridor and took the first stairway she found. “Up,” she said, and again, “Up. Up.” She repeated it with every breath, hurrying two steps at a time in places, then slowing to stomp up and up. The stairs dumped her into an intersection of corridors, and she chose with a command: “Up!” and the corridor slanted upward, curving for her exactly as she wished. She reached another staircase, this one steep, and she hooked her skirts over her elbow and half crawled, half climbed.
Absolutely breathless and lost in time, Nothing continued upward. Her muscles burned, and her chest; sweat cooled against her skin. She stepped on her skirt and tore free a string of three cerulean butterflies. They tumbled behind her and landed flat against the dark granite.
Finally Nothing saw a dim glow of silver as the stairs narrowed and steepened until they were more of a ladder than steps. She emerged through a jagged hole, into the stars.
She stood on a shelf against a peak of the Fifth Mountain, formed by black waves of cooled lava. Wind and rain had scoured it into a cupped palm, a tiny valley just her size, and scraggly grasses managed to grow, along with little flowers. Their buds were shut tight against the night.
Nothing collapsed in a heap of pink and orange organza. She hugged her knees and pressed her forehead to them, breathing hard, trying to steady her pulse and calm down.
Wind teased her hair, tickling her neck and shoulders.
She didn’t feel powerful.
Nothing leaned her head back. Thin silver clouds floated over the half-moon, glowing with its light, and beyond thousands and thousands of stars spread. She tried to find shapes, but the sky was only shredded silk, a massive pearl, and a million shards of glass.
Beneath the night shine, Nothing felt small. Only a human, with a small heart, small bones, small hopes, and no ambition. She’d never minded before. It had never occurred to her to mind.
And now she wondered. And now she wanted.
She wanted to feel as big as the night sky and as filled with magic. Dark distance, silver light, that night shine—she wanted to know the kinds of purple and midnight blue and sparks of red layered together that made it seem so black between the stars, and she wanted to stare and stare until the stars stopped being silver and turned pink, blue, orange, and gold. She wanted the stars to be butterflies.
Nothing wanted to know what she could be. Not what she might have been.
If she was going to return to the palace, she could never resume her shadow role, Kirin’s Nothing. She had to be something different, something new.
Two days remained to find out if she was large or small, both, or something else entirely. Two days would not be enough. She needed more time here on the mountain, with the sorceress. She… wanted to remain with the sorceress… and to keep the core of the Fifth Mountain strong.
But she wanted to see Kirin and Sky safely home too, and witness Kirin made forever the Heir to the Moon. She wanted to speak with the great demon of the palace again, ask it some very pointed questions.
She’d have to find a way to do it all. Everything she wanted.
Nothing curled down on her side, nestled in billowing sheer silk and tiny rainbow insects, against the mountain, and tilted her face to the sky.
TWENTY-SIX
DAWN WOKE NOTHING WITH a gentle caress against her lashes, reddening her dreams. She squeezed herself into a tighter ball and sighed. It was cold on the mountaintop, but she’d nestled into her dress, the loose volcanic gravel, and thin grasses.
She opened her eyes to find a little blue flower nodding at her. It was the size of her smallest fingernail, clustered with a handful of others. Nothing drew a breath to seek a scent: the only perfume in the air was ice.
Her tongue tasted a little sour, and she wondered if demons ever had bad breath.
Probably only if they wanted to. They didn’t need to breathe at all.
Slowly she stood and stretched, feeling remarkably rested. Her body was ready for anything, not sore or tired or stiff. She licked her lips and shifted so she could grasp at the rocks edging this natural balcony and peer over.
The Fifth Mountain spread downward in jagged peaks and tumbling boulders and sheer drops. The mirror lake winked at her. She wanted a cold bath. Overhead blue skies rippled with lines of clouds sweeping away from the mountain. The sun was up, a shining full disk, and Nothing wondered if demons could look straight at it without a headache.
Blinking, she went back to the cave entrance and climbed down, letting herself be swallowed again by the shade.
Once she’d made it down the ladder to the stairs, she choose a spot in the wall that seemed shaped the right way and correctly tall: she closed her eyes, reached out, and her hand touched the many-petaled knob.
Inside her bedroom she was alone, and she washed her face, cleaned her mouth, relieved her bladder, and without changing, headed for the mirror lake.
To Nothing’s surprise Sky and Kirin were there too, along with the spirit of the Selegan River and what seemed to be a hundred dawn sprites.
The Selegan was shaped like a youth, half-naked and teasing the dawn sprites by lifting handfuls of water and splashing them. The sprites fled, screaming like tiny birds, but swooped around for more, splashing the dragon back by fluttering wet wings at them.