“You don’t say,” Broomstick said. “How many have you had?”
Fairy stopped bouncing in place—only for a second—to stick her tongue out at him.
“Anyway,” she said, “as soon as it’s dark again, we can start burning flowers, and the perfume will carry our prayers up to Celestae. In the meantime, who wants some lolaro? They taste like cherries mixed with apricots and a dash of sunshine!” She skipped from Wolf to Broomstick to Spirit, offering the purple berries. No one extended their hands.
She couldn’t understand why.
Chapter Fourteen
A couple hours later, Daemon carefully placed a stem of night jasmine in front of him. Without water, it had wilted a bit, but it still seemed to wake beneath the moonlight, delicate petals opening and releasing their powerful perfume.
Please work, he thought as he knelt on his rolled-up mat.
Daemon took a deep breath and began to recite a plea, but it was very different from yesterday’s.
Hey-o, he began. I’m going out on an arrogant limb and hoping that, because I might be your son, you’ll hear me. Kichona has fallen into the hands of a delusional maniac who worships Zomuri, who, you probably know, is also insane. The only ones who can stop him are me and my friends, but as you can see, we could use your help. Me, in particular. I switch from wolf to pathetically naked boy at random, which pretty much sums up our position. So will you do it? I could really use some fatherly guidance here. I mean, even if it’s not you, just someone up there, please help.
Was it too up front? Possibly. Requests to the gods were supposed to be laden with deference and ceremony. But so far, the stiff approach hadn’t worked; maybe normal entreaties were just background noise in Celestae. Daemon hoped his informality would make his plea stand out.
As with yesterday, they kept praying steadily through the night, but they took breaks when the smoke got too thick, since it was compounded with the heady perfume of the flowers tonight.
As night gave way to early morning, Daemon began to sag on his mat. The brashness of his pleas shifted to dispirited resignation. At one point, he caught himself staring blankly at nothing in front of him, the flowers just a smoldering pile of ash.
But at the moment Daemon was about to give up, some of the stars directly above him seemed to wink out, as if a giant cloud had blown in to cover that portion of the sky.
He didn’t move.
Did I imagine that?
Daemon looked again at the spot in the sky. Where a constellation had twinkled earlier, now there was a distinct splotch of black sky.
“I think something’s happening . . . ,” he said.
Someone in the thicket of trees cleared his throat.
Daemon, Sora, Fairy, and Broomstick were supposed to be the only ones in the chestnut grove.
They turned toward the noise, half-hopeful their pleas had been answered but half-afraid they’d find a squadron of ryuu standing there. Everyone drew their weapons.
A young man stood in the shadows on the other side of the grove. He was so still he could have been mistaken for a tree. He stepped forward into the moonlight, revealing that he wore nothing but a loincloth made of alligator hide.
It wasn’t the ryuu. But it wasn’t Vespre either.
“Greetings,” said the boy in an oddly formal way. He looked only a little older than Daemon. “I apologize for my appearance. Is this what a proper human looks like?” He gestured over the length of his body.
“Hi there. . . .” Sora’s jaw dropped.
Jealousy made Daemon clench his. But why was he feeling that way at all? Daemon was together with Fairy, and Sora was free to ogle whoever she wanted. Still, he couldn’t shake the tightness in his chest, even though he wanted to.
“What do you mean, a ‘proper human’?” Broomstick asked.
“I have never set foot outside Celestae,” the boy said as if that explained everything.
“You’re a god?” Daemon asked. The boy didn’t look like any of the major ones, at least not from the descriptions they’d read all their lives.
“I’m Liga,” he said. “I heard your prayers about an oncoming war, and I smelled the night bloomers, two things that don’t usually go together. I was curious, so I came.”
Sora frowned. “That doesn’t explain much.”
“It doesn’t?” Liga scratched his head, as if confused why this, too, wasn’t a sufficient answer.
It was then that Daemon noticed Liga’s reptilian claws—at least three inches each and not “proper human” by a long shot—tucking his long hair behind his ear.
Dark blue hair, just like Daemon’s. Faint sparks off his skin lit Liga like a distant halo.
Daemon swallowed and took a couple deep breaths. “Is Liga short for ‘alligator’?” he asked in a whisper, because the idea seemed both inane and full of hope all at once.
Liga nodded.
“I don’t understand,” Sora said.
But Daemon did. “You’re the alligator constellation from the night sky.”
Liga smiled. “Yes, brother. I am.”
Chapter Fifteen
That means Daemon really is the wolf constellation,” Sora said. “But . . . how?”
Liga wrinkled his forehead. “What do you mean?”
Now it was her turn to be perplexed. She tried to think through what he might be confused about. The best way, she decided, was to explain specifically what she was asking. “How did Daemon go from being a demigod in Celestae, like you, to being a taiga apprentice on earth?”
“Aha.” A smile spread across Liga’s face. “I understand now. You would like to hear a story, correct? Because telling stories is how humans process a world that is otherwise too vast for you to comprehend.” It sounded like an insult, but he said it matter-of-factly.
Sora knew that he was probably right. Liga didn’t seem mean; he simply didn’t know how to interact with humans, which made his speech a bit awkward and, sometimes, too blunt. So she pushed away the indignation that had flared at Liga’s condescension and said, “Yes. We’d like to hear the story of what happened to Daemon.”
“As you wish.” Liga looked up toward the sky, and the air above their chestnut grove turned hazy, as if a purple cloud had descended. As he began to speak, moving images appeared in the violet fog, like a vivid, realistic miniature of everything that had transpired.
Celestae was a paradise, an island in the heavens that looked as if it were made of honey, translucently golden and crystalline. Sweet peaches and plums bowed the tree branches, and the air smelled of their nectar. There were lakes of such stunning turquoise, no color on earth could compete, and mountains topped with thick snow as fine as powdered sugar. Each god lived in a grand palace of their own making, with every luxury they could ever desire, and they entertained themselves with contests of strength and speed, celebrations full of music and dancing, and bountiful feasts with endless fountains of rice wine.
But there was one denizen of the heavens who grew tired of his idle life. The constellation wolf did not know how long he had lived here—time did not exist in Celestae, and so a day could be years, or a millennium could be a minute—but he did know he was bored. He craved, for better or for worse, hardship and challenge.