Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) Read Free Page B

regret, and then her wind is borne upward, and she sees a white moon, bright and full, bathing the rich woods of Alabion. A pair of birds flies past the moon, one pale to the point of being silver and the other black. The black one is chasing the other; she knows that he wishes to kill it, just as she knows the men whom the birds represent. Suddenly, speedily, she is pulled downward through the netting of trees toward a campfire and an oddly laid scene. Beside the sparking fire is a weathered corpse; its grimace could be interpreted as a smile, and a magpie is pecking at its yellow teeth
.
    “A kiss,” she thinks. “How sweet.” For these shapes do not hide the true selves of these beings, and she knows them for who they truly are. It warms her that they will find each other
.
    A growl commands her attention elsewhere, to the shade outside the campfire’s reach. She sees him prowling the darkness there, a great man or beast—a bit of each, she thinks—and he is not hidden in allegory as with much of her vision. He is clear, this enormous, grumbling creature who walks on all fours and snaps his teeth to the night. The man’s bearing is defensive, protective. “Of what?” she wonders, until the glimmer of ivory and red courts her eye from the circle he paces. Again, there is no couched meaning to be found, and what he guards is as clear to her as her own name: a maiden. Elemech’s heart twists with emotions—excitement, fear, joy—and the vision twists with it and shatters
.
    “The one lost,” Elemech mumbled, paler than cream.
    She was still gazing into the pool, which had returned to its clarity and had no more secrets to share with her. She had enough to deal with anyway. Instinctually, she called for her elder sister, whose wisdom would be needed for this matter.
    “Eean,” she whispered.
    “Eean is dead; come mourn with me,” pleaded Ealasyd.
    Elemech went to join her small sister over the body of Eean, and they huddled together and cried. Elemech’s tears came from sorrow as much asfrom what the pool had shown her, which neither she nor Ealasyd had the power to face alone. If only Eean were with them now, she would know what to do. How to grease the wheels of possibility without breaking the machine.
    “We are lost without her,” sniffled Elemech, unusually emotional. “What an inconvenient time to die.”
    “She’ll be back soon,” said Ealasyd. She started undressing the corpse. “We should return her flesh to the forest, as she likes us to do. Come help, sister.”
    The sisters stripped Eean’s body and neatly set her garments and staff aside on a shelf; these items wouldn’t be used again for many, many years. Using the water from Elemech’s pool, they washed her, and then anointed her skin with badger musk and animal fats so that she would be a sumptuous-smelling meal for the beasts of the woods. For Eean’s dignity, they placed a crown of dried ivy about her head. Carefully, with Elemech carrying the shoulders and Ealasyd lugging the feet, they dragged the thin carcass of their sister down the labyrinth of dark tunnels and out of the cave. At the edge of the meadow they stopped, taking a breath before finishing their task, as poor Ealasyd was spent from the haul. A handful of stars had joined the shy moon to watch Eean’s passing, and the night was crisp, windless, and calm.
    “I don’t feel anything yet. In my belly,” noted Ealasyd.
    Come to think of it, neither did Elemech; the candle of new life had not been lit in her womb. Eean was not returning to life.
What is she waiting for?
wondered Elemech.
    “Do you think?” said the sisters together, and bent over to examine Eean.
    As if on a spring, Eean’s mouth popped open and a gasp escaped. For such a tiny breath, it roared past the sisters’ faces like a monster of air and thunder. The sisters stared up at the sky for a while, trying to guess where Eean’s breath, this wind, had gone. Their souls and faces were bright,