The Lost Children (Tas Owake), Part Three: Never Broken (Yaiy Tyinohayon)

(Read part one here, or read part two here)

I was very young when I first stepped into my tree, too young. Otwan, being older, had already begun that, and I wanted to catch up with her. So, one day, I slipped away to play by myself, to find my way to my tree and be in it for the first time, if I could.

Qetawiwoy, as I explain to you, is the word for those of us born with trees and with separate bodies from trees. Qeta, tree. Wiwoy, those woy who look human, as you understand it. We do not enter our trees until both bodies are strong enough to be together and separate at the same time.

Kay-tuh, you say. It is close enough for now.

I entered the tree easily, slipped in as though between sheets of rain. Deceptively easily. Inside, I was caught in the ebb and flow of life inside the bark. The pull downwards of sunlight to roots. The rush up of water to leaves. And the vast web of forest around me, the chatter of the other trees, the touch of their roots next to mine. It was so… big. I had spoken with so many other tree woy before in our silent way, could pass days with Otwan without saying a word aloud if we didn’t have to remember those around us. But here, inside. Here was the whole world and I was so small in it.

So small.

Almost nothing.

Enough to be nothing.

To be lost inside.

To be nothing but tree.

STOP THAT. The words jolted me back to myself. Who are you?

I shivered, there inside, only barely holding to the thread of myself that kept me separate.

Who are you?

Weyai, I said, and the saying of it gave me back my own skin.

Weyai, good.

What are you? I asked, politely: Kayehuwawohut? Whoever was speaking to me hadn’t been polite, but that could have been oversight. Or perhaps they could tell I was still young. Either way, they didn’t answer.

What else, Weyai? What’s the rest of your name?

The rest of my name?

For a panicked moment, I didn’t know, and couldn’t say.

Weyai! Weyai!

I don’t remember!

What do you remember?

I thought hard.

I remember Otwan.

Otwan?

My sister. Otwan Hiqwayaqiqatiy. The name came to me easily. Oh! I’m Weyai Hiqwayaqiqatiy. I settled, in my tree, myself only, the vast forest still accessible, but outside of me.

There was a pause, and I was blessedly at peace again.

Nice to meet you, Weyai Hiqwayaqiqatiy. Now, can you get out of your tree?

I don’t know how.

There was a chuckle. One of Hiqwayaq’s daughters going into her tree unsupervised. Well, Weyai, press up against your tree from the inside. Can you do that?

I think so. I made myself as big as possible within the bark and came to the edge of me. It tickles.

Good, now. Step out.

Step out? But how could I—I saw the place where my tree and the air met, and I remembered that I had a body that wasn’t a tree and if I had slipped in like that, then…

***

Otwan begged me not to go.

I hear it too, Mother had said. Follow it. And I would have followed without her being Hiqwayaq. I would have followed it only for the heavy sadness in her words, for the echo of a chainsaw. For the reason I touched my tree with affection, and where my heart ached for the touch to be felt.

***

“I don’t understand,” says the woman I sit with on the back porch of a house surrounded by trees. To human eyes, we both appeared as such—as two women sitting together while the breeze wove around us and cooled our skin. Speaking human words.

“Qetatyawoy,” I respond.

She shakes her head.

“Qeta, tree.”

“I remember that part.”

“Tyawoy—a woy who is… in between. Whose form isn’t set.”

“A tree being without set form.” She frowns, staring at the forest.

I nod.

“But I have a form. And a tree.”

“Kayehuwekeq?” I say softly, and the woman draws back. You called to me. A world full of trees and you called to me.

***

We could be like sisters, too, I said. We had spoken often after that first time, when she had taught me to leave my tree, and we had taught each other so many things since.

Wouldn’t Otwan get jealous?

I don’t th—

Her cry of pain shot through me.

What’s wrong?

She didn’t respond, and so I ran on child-legs and stepped through bark to reach from within my tree to where she was. To where the buzz of the chainsaw was the roar of a beast in my ears, where the savaging of her bark, her body, left an empty space as though not even air could fill it.

Step out! I cried.

I can’t! I’m not like you; I can’t!

Step out! I begged. Step out, step out, step out!

But the pain overtook her and her voice stopped. The tree cracked, fell to the ground, and it was empty.

***

You stare at me now.

“You thought I was dead,” you say.

“For years.”

“I thought I was alone.”

In the telling of our stories, you had told me yours. How your tree had fallen to reveal a girl, and you were taken in by the people who had killed your home without knowing, were given a new name.

“Why didn’t I remember you?” you ask.

“You didn’t call me until after your tree regrew,” I say. “Maybe it was less painful to forget.” But I don’t know. A qetatyawoy with a body like mine. A qesutlhowoy with legs. I reach for your hand, and my heart is warm when you take it.

You stop, turn your eyes to our entwined fingers. “Weyai. I knew that name when I heard it. There was a… like lightning in my chest.” I feel you shaking through your hand in mine.

“Minerva,” I say, carefully. Inawa, my mouth wanted to say when you first said it, to bring you to us that way, but you corrected me, and now I say your name to you.

You grab me into a hug, arms tight around my body.

“I can’t believe I never told you my name then.”

Holding you as tight as possible, I shake my head and hold my breath, waiting.

“I am owake no more,” you say, and draw your own breath. “Kayiyi Minerva Thiessen.” My heart swells until I’m sure my body can no longer contain it.

Minerva.

My friend.

Never broken.

(Read Minerva's story before this one in The Tree Remembers)

The Lost Children (Tas Owake), Part Two: I Hear it, Too

(Read part one here)

Otwan takes in every detail of this Ewulin. Despite her clear voice, a wrinkled brow and one hand held behind her back as she rubbed her thumb. Replaying the young woman’s entrance in her mind, she detects an unusual gait.

It’s as though she’s still learning to walk, she tells her sister. And expects the ground to be liquid. I believe her that she’s qesutlhowoy.

She speaks as though she’s a human learning speech, Weyai replies. And with a name like that… I haven’t heard any like it.

Owake, then?

“Daughters!” Their mother laughs. Beside her, Ewulin shifts, bites her lip. Hiqwayaq pats her hand and addresses her. “I take it you haven’t met any tree woy?”

“I haven’t.”

Hiqwayaq gives Otwan and Weyai a smile. “Keep your comments aloud, daughters. Or perhaps listen to what I’ve called you to hear.”

Some days ago, a crow came to Otwan and bowed its head before croaking a message from her mother: “Bring Weyai and join the lhai and lhaiqi as we meet to discuss what to do about the owake.” As woy, neither gods or spirits, as humans would term it, Otwan and her sister weren’t to be in such a meeting, but when the highest lhai and your mother tells you to come, you come. And all the rest obey.

Hearing the invitation, Otwan had thought her mother needed Weyai to provide account of the voice she’d been hearing, spoken as a tree woy would, but with human words. To what end, Otwan didn’t ask. The owake were lost; lost were the owake. Live too near the places where this world and the human world touched, and crossover happened. But once someone from this world forgot they weren’t human, well. How do you find them?

Hiqwayaq brought up the topic from time to time, as far as Otwan heard from Yehan and other local lhaiqi, but nothing changed. Not that talking appeared to have made this change possible.

“What I remember first,” Ewulin says, “is being alone in a deep pool in a forest a little like this one.”

Alone?

Weyai takes Otwan’s hand, echoing Otwan’s horror at the thought.

“I lived there for—I’m not sure how long. My earliest memories are few and far between. I lost our speech. I learned human speech from the ones who would visit the pool, and I thought I was the only one of me there was.

“One day, a human fell into the pool and drowned. She looked like me. I swam out of the water and had legs; I don’t know how. And pretended to be her for a time, until I learned about the ocean again. Until I came home.”

A qesutlhowoy without the ocean… Otwan didn’t know what she would do without the trees. And a being of their world without any of their kind, with only humans, knowing they weren’t one of them? She squeezed her sister’s hand.

But this Ewulin, this supposed owake-who-was, couldn’t have endured that kind of pain.

“I don’t believe you,” Otwan says.

Otwan…

Hiqwayaq, calming the angry eruption that burst from the rest of the listeners following Otwan’s comment, says to her daughter: “Why not?”

“How could anyone survive being away like that, knowing they weren’t human? Knowing…” she trembles, glad for her sister’s touch. “Why not try to return sooner?”

Quietly, Ewulin only said, “I didn’t know there was anything to return to.”

***

I believe her, I say to my mother, but Hiqwayaq doesn’t respond. Not being a tree being, my mother didn’t communicate often like that, and usually didn’t say anything back. But I think she always hears. I’ve never fully understood how, if she’s not like Otwan or me, but she can.

Still, bolstered by knowing what I’ll say, I speak aloud.

“I believe her.”

“What?” Otwan nearly pulls away from me.

My mother nods and addresses everyone. “The qesutlhowoy that Ewulin returned to have checked everything thoroughly and I am convinced. An owake has returned. And it could be that there are still owake who think they are human but, for the sake of those who are alone—” I feel Otwan’s shiver at the word through my hand— “and who know they are such, we cannot leave them there without some effort to bring them home.”

“Oh, like we’ve always done?” says Iyhan, lhaiqi of a small pool-glade some way from here, near a thin place between ours and the human world. “We’re so good at leaving the human world alone.” She was still just young enough that disgruntled worked for her.

“You might have been owake yourself,” Hiqwayaq reminded her gently. “If things had occurred differently.”

Iyhan closes her mouth, her expression softening. “How do we find them if we don’t know how to identify them?”

Who are you?

I should tell Mother about the voice. And, as I look to her, I find her eyes meeting mine.

I hear it, too.

(Read the conclusion here.)

The Lost Children (Tas Owake), Part One: Kayehuwekeq?

The leaf bent under the weight of water, a single drop too large for the new shoot to hold and, with unselfconscious grace, green bowed to shed blue from its back.

With the same quality of motion, the girl knelt to cup the leaf with one hand.

“Not broken,” she said with a smile. “Never broken.” And stood, giving the leaf a stroke almost absently, but with a great deal of affection. Behind her, her mother reaches out and the two leave, hand in hand, before mother stops to pick up child and carry her home.

***

A tree now stands there, tall, still young by the count of trees, and I stand with it, watching the time when I was small in my memory.

Never broken, but others have not been so lucky. I remember the day, one of so many, but the day I knew, the bite of the chainsaw as the man who held it cut through wooden flesh, not knowing what it held.

“How many lost?”

“Too many,” says my sister, Otwan, coming to meet me. “Ready?” I nod, giving my tree a caress before we depart to a meeting with lhai, what I suppose humans would call gods.

“Has mother forgotten we’re woy?” I asked when Otwan first told me of the invitation. She shrugged.

“You know they wouldn’t dare say no to her.”

I supposed being Hiqwayaq has its advantages.

***

Who are you?

A voice reaching out from the distance, the farthest distance and the closest.

Who are you?

But it does not respond to that. So I try answering.

I am Weyai, daughter of Hiqwayaq.

Who are you? The voice echoes mournfully, and it is only now I realize we do not speak the same language. But I heard and responded as if its “Who are you?” was my native “Kayehuwekeq?”

“Kayiyi Weyai Hiqwayaqiqatiy,” I said to the silence after my question, before I realized, but now all I hear is the mournful echo of “Who are you?” and though I understand the words, I am too shocked to respond before the sound fades.

“Kayehuwekeq…” I taste the word.

“Weyai?” Otwan’s eyebrows are drawn together as she bends to see my face.

Human words again, I say, through my tree to hers. Spoken like this.

Did you tell her…?

I lift my head sharply to meet her gaze. I thought you had.

Otwan stares, open-mouthed. Then why…?

“Daughters!” Our mother says with amusement, dark hand raised to call for silence. She wears her summer aspect, golden and green, with brown between, and her hair brightens the forest with its burnished sunlight.

The lhai around her and the lhaiqi, the minor gods, among them stare at us only a moment before muttering and shifting as a group of strangers arrive. The man and woman weave through those at the far end, a young woman of about eighteen following behind, auburn hair nearly red when in the spots of dappled sunlight. The lhaiqi of this forest stands before them, stopping their approach.

“I am Yehan,” she says, “And this forest is my domain.”

The woman and man draw back with a bow. “She comes here at the behest of Hiqwayaq.”

Woy, then, to speak formally like that with a lhaiqi. Not tree woy, like myself or Otwan, I don’t think, as they do not respond to the unseen reaching out of the trees around them, nor are they connected with plants for the same reason.

“I am Ewulin,” the young woman says, voice wavering. Odd name. And human-accented words—could she be? But no, wrong voice. And too young. The voice wasn’t clear as they usually are in that communication, but something in me knew the speaker hadn’t been this young.

Kayehuwekeq.

Humans don’t have lhai, woy, the rest. They don’t care. Their “Who are you?” could be to any kind of being. Why assume the voice called to one close to it? But it did. I don’t know how I know, but I know it did.

“Let her past,” my mother says. Yehan draws back and Ewulin, glancing quickly with furrowed brow to the lhai and lhaiqi around her, approached my mother, the highest of the lhai. Hiqwayaq, with a wide, genuine smile, beckons for the girl to come to her and takes her hand with a comforting squeeze. “Tell them what you told me, and do not worry about formal address.”

Ewulin, keeping hold of my mother’s hand, turns to face us. She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders.

“I am Ewulin,” she says, “Qesutlhowoy. And I used to be an owake.”

Murmurs breaks out, first at her assertion of being qesutlhowoy, louder at owake.

She has legs, says Otwan, sounding dumbfounded. But I heard her real question behind the obvious comment. More so than a qesutlhowoy—a sea being which would look to a human to be part fish or other marine life—having legs, an owake found.

A lost child.

Found.

How does someone who forgot what they are return from the world of humans?

How do you undo the felling of a tree?

Kayehuwekeq?

(Flip the page to keep reading.)

The Peace of the Gods

Under the maelstrom sky, a pond. Beneath that pond, a wellspring. Around that pond, the forest. The heads of the trees nodded over the small liquid hollow, needles a lattice as though the spring had reached into the air to form a shield against the violence of the atmosphere.

Into the peace it created, saint Gih arrived.

This was before his power; this was before his fame. Saint Gih came to the wood of Belameh while the goddess fought the first battles of the uprising, when doom lay on all their foreheads. A poacher, he entered the wood, seeking the white deer the hunters spoke of in reverent whispers, the white stag whose antlers shone like the moon. The antlers which, when ground to a powder, would keep a man from death.

Saint Gih arrived at the pool.

The spring lay beneath, unnoted, unseen. From it poured all the water of the air. Saint Gih had entered the clearing to escape the storm; Saint Gih had arrived to find the source of its chaos. Though he had found no deer in the wood, the lightning across the sky remained atop the water. The pool held it, branching to one side, branching to another.

And in the image held there, saint Gih found what he sought, though he did not know it.

A deer stood at the edge of the pond, a doe white as the moon. Saint Gih raised his bow. If he should not cheat death this night, at least he should eat. The arrow flew, shot truly, bent awry in the air that rose above the water. The doe fled into the darkening wood.

Though he did not know it, saint Gih’s death left him.

Before him, an arrow. Beneath it, a wellspring. The power that shielded the storm held half a weapon at eye level, and saint Gih stood transfixed. He turned to the sky, the dome above him, grown out of nature as though shaped by hands. He turned to the trees, arced when they should be straight. He turned downward, and saw the lightning in the water.

Saint Gih saw the storm in the water.

The words of those who were not yet saints came to him out of the spring. The words of those who fought the gods entered his mind and churned therein. He could not deny what he had once doubted, and though they saw only defeat, under the sky he saw their victory.

Under the sky he saw their peace.

Leaving the arrow, he entered. Leaving his bow, he drowned. Leaving himself, he submerged. And the wellspring rose to meet him. The wellspring poured through him to the clouds. The wellspring put the lightning into him. Saint Gih, who had hid from battle for fear, though that fear ate him until his shrinking heart sought the secret the trees hid, broke the surface converted to their cause.

He arose saint Gih, firstborn of the entombers of gods.

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This story, first published on my Patreon, comes from my work in progress Hunter and Prey, which will be the third book in the White Changeling series. It may have differences in the final book, as this is taken from the first draft, but I anticipate it will remain mostly the same.

The other books in the series so far are Hidden in Sealskin and Like Mist Over the Eyes.

From Two Comes All

There was a goddess who pulled two points together
Unconnected
Unrelated
They were nothing
They were something
She held one in each hand
Lifted above each shoulder, as if in blessing
Brought her palms together
Not enough to touch
She didn't need to
She knew
The points only needed proximity
A moment
Before pulling her hands away
And an entire web expanded between them
A world, created on two poles
A world, created
By two points
Two hands
And the possibilities have never stopped growing

Answer The Question

I tilted my head back against the pastel green wall of the day spa, relaxing just enough that I could feel every ache and pain in my body. Man, I was looking forward to this massage. 

The doorhandle on one of the client rooms twisted, and a fraction of a second before the door opened, I stiffened. Heat sang through my body and, furious, I stuffed it away, stifling a groan. Not Ty. For a brief moment I panicked, wondering if Bianca had mixed things up and booked my massage with Ty—something I’d asked never to happen again after that first time—but I forced myself to breathe and relax, keeping my eyes closed. Bianca ran her day spa with a golden heart and an iron fist; she wouldn’t do that to me. 

Still, as Ty exited the client room and crossed the waiting area, footsteps soft on the rugged floor. I felt more than heard him pause in front of me, every sense in my body standing to rigid attention. 

Steady breath in, steady breath out. Steady breath in, steady breath out. I’d managed to successfully ignore him through all of our infrequent encounters since that first massage, and today would be no different. 

In front of me, he sniffed. “I clearly need to have a word with Bianca,” he muttered, and I couldn’t tell if he was including me in his audience or not. “That lounge needs replacing, and some things around here are getting downright old and worn.”

I managed to avoid choking on my disbelief until he left the room, though I could still see the back of his head disappearing down the stairs, so doubtless he heard me. Whatever. I didn’t even care. Stupid, arrogant, jerk-faced twat. Just because he was so pretty that girls fell over themselves to be near him, he’d decided he was God’s gift to humanity. Well, I wasn’t falling for it, even if it had been the best bloody massage of my life. I was not some stupid, vapid piece of arm-candy for him to play with. Urgh. 

I slammed my head back against the wall just a little too hard, and winced. Moron! Imbecile! Arrogant peacocky slimeball!

“Ellie?” Bianca’s soothing voice halted my litany and I sighed, forcing away the negative energy encounters with Ty always left. “Your turn, honey.”

Damn him. I was going to enjoy my massage. He was not going to ruin this perfect moment of relaxation. Firmly shoving thoughts of stunningly gorgeous manwhores from mind, I followed Bianca into a treatment room. 

* * *

I slid into my regular seat at Felici’s just as Nana and Lydia, my older sister, were handing their menus to the waitress. “I’ll have the usual,” I said as the waitress raised an eyebrow at me. 

She nodded and swept away, leaving behind a cobalt blue bottle that sparkled and dripped with condensation. 

“So,” I said, pouring water for everyone, “What’s new?”

Lydia shrugged. “Nothing much. I was just moaning about how much working retail during the holiday season sucks. Though at least Ty is on this afternoon, so things won’t get deadly boring until he finishes up at six.”

The glass I was reaching for slipped, tipped, and sailed towards the floor. Nana, with characteristic lightning reflexes, caught it before it had barely left the table, deftly setting it upright and relieving me of my water-pouring duties.

“Ty works at the boutique as well?” I said, aiming for nonchalant. 

Nana smirked, and I pointedly ignored her. 

Lydia nodded. “Oh yeah. He does mornings in the spa and afternoons downstairs in the storefront.”

I made a careful mental note to avoid the boutique in the afternoons. Not that I needed much help with that; Dusk Alley was a designer boutique selling women’s clothing, jewellery and cosmetics that was at least four times out of my price range. I’d known they were affiliated with the day spa, but I hadn’t realised they shared staff. I guess it made sense, especially for the cosmetics and beauty product sales. Whatever. Irrelevant. 

I shoved the whole issue aside and turned to Nana. “So, I was thinking of hitting up the department store this afternoon. I need some clothes for work. Do you want to come?” Not only did Nana have impeccable taste, she also had an almost bottomless bank account that she had no qualms sharing with her only two surviving family members. 

She nodded decisively. “Yes,” she said. “It will be illuminating.”

My eyebrows knitted in puzzlement, but I let it pass. Nana was well known for her bizarre comments and apparently unconnected observations. “Sure,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Swing by Alley when you’re done,” Lydia said. I’m stuck there till eleven tonight. I’ll take my break when you come.”

Nana was already agreeing enthusiastically, and I groaned. So much for avoiding the place. 

Never mind. We’d go in, find Lydia, and drag her out for a break. The chances of running into Ty were entirely minimal. Everything would be fine. 

* * *

“I’ll just be a second,” I assured Nana as I ducked into the bathrooms. We’d spend a good couple of hour clothes hunting, and all of the resulting outfits were nicer than what I had on now. If we were going to stop past the boutique to collect Lydia, my chances of running into Ty were absolutely minimal, thank heavens—but I wasn’t about to give him more fodder for insults if I could avoid it. Old and tired. Prat. 

Locked safely in a stall, I surveyed my options. The navy was too formal; the silver too attention seeking. I settled on a neutral-toned skirt that showed off my butt and a red silk blouse with fluttery cap sleeves that managed to actually make me look like I had cleavage for a change. The whole outfit was sophisticated and chic yet effortless, the neutral skirt enriching the light brown of my hair and the red blouse the best possible colour for my skin tone. 

I pulled it all on, slipped on one of the many pairs of gorgeous new shoes—it was so shallow, but I did love Nana’s bank account—fluffed my hair, and headed back out. 

Nana whistled. “Don’t you look special,” she said.

I smiled distractedly, running my fingers along the blouse’s neckline. “It’s missing something,” I said. “I need something around my neck.”

Nana shrugged. “If you say so.”

I loaded my bags back into the trolley and marched off with it determinedly. Three times Nana tried to draw my attention to jewellery stores that we passed, but I knew exactly the one I was after. 

We rounded the corner: Dusk Alley. Chewing the inside of my lip and narrowing my eyes, I made a beeline for the back of the store, where their jewellery display was located. 

Nana caught up after a few moments, and eyed the dazzling array of entirely over-the-top necklaces, the lightest of which looking like it had to weigh at least a pound. “These aren’t really what you’re looking for, dear,” she observed candidly.

I shrugged, stifling my irritation at the truth of her words. “I thought they’d have a bigger range. This one’s okay,” I added, pointing out a silver-filigreed piece with a floral motif. 

Voices erupted around the end of the aisle and I froze. I will not turn around. I will not turn around. I realised I was checking myself out in the mirror to make sure the outfit was sitting right, and jerked my gaze away. “Or this one.” I reached for another necklace to my left, conveniently allowing me to turn my back on the approaching Prince of Twathood. 

Nana, of course, turned towards him. “Oh, I see. Of course.”

Was it permissible to hit grandmothers for being smug? If it had been Lydia I’d have whacked her for sure. 

“I’ll just go wait out the front, I think,” Nana continued, oblivious to my glares. “My feet, you know. And my hips. And my back.” She hobbled away to the tables out the front, looking every day of her age—which I’d never seen her do when she wasn’t up to mischief. Urgh. 

I was too busy fuming at her retreating back to realise that Ty had gotten within range. 

“Can I help you?” he said, eyes dancing. 

No. I was not looking at his stupid eyeballs. I whirled back to the jewellery display. “That one,” I said primly. “I’d like to try it on please.”

He reached for the necklace that hung just out of my reach, brushing past my shoulder in the process. I jolted at the energy his touch sent through me and ended up three feet away down the aisle. My stupid reflexes were always a little unpredictable, but they always seemed worse when he was around. This had been an utterly stupid idea. So what if he thought I looked old and tired? Why did I care what he thought? 

“Here.” 

I turned back to him, expecting to see the silver filigree. Instead, he held a ropey, glimmering creation I could have sworn wasn’t on the shelves a moment ago. It was a single necklace, but made up of tens or maybe even hundreds of strands; I couldn’t quite get a fix on it to figure it out, and the threads it was woven from seemed unnaturally fine and soft, like spider’s silk, the beads tiny and delicate as dewdrops. It glimmered gently in the fluorescent lights of the store, and I stood motionless, transfixed. 

“Do you like it?” There was a depth of emotion to Ty’s voice that I’d never heard before, and my heart skipped a beat in response. 

“Yes,” I breathed, awkwardness and irritation forgotten.

Ty beamed and my pulse skipped again. Saints, he was beautiful. Too beautiful, like a dangerous snake, but as he moved towards me with the necklace in hand, I was powerless to break the spell. 

He reached for me and I turned to face the mirror, back to him so he could fasten the jewellery around my neck. Instead, he laid one end of it across my forehead and directed me to hold it in place while he arranged the rest of the multitude of strands through the back of my hair, half catching it up in a style that seemed at once impossibly complex and incredibly simple. 

He fastened the catch on the jewellery just above my left ear and dropped a strand of hair to cover it. I stared at myself in the mirror, lost for words. The necklace—headpiece—whatever it was—had glimmered before, but in my hair it fairly shone. I felt like I was wearing a headdress made of moonlight that seemed to pulse gently in time with my breaths. 

“Stunning.” 

I glanced up at Ty in the mirror, surprised to see his eyes shining wetly. That instant was enough to break the spell, though, and I turned. “Let me show Nana,” I said. “I mean, let me see what she thinks.”

He stepped back, deferential. “Of course.”

Out the front of the store I found Lydia engaged in vibrant conversation with Nana, who sat with her back to me. Lydia’s eyes widened as she spotted me and paused midsentence. Nana twisted in her chair to see what Lydia had seen—and her hand flew to her mouth. 

“Oh,” she said as I drew close. “Oh, Elyena. You have it in your hair.”

I shrugged, suddenly embarrassed. “Oh, well,” I said, tugging on the strands across my forehead. “Ty thought he’d try something different.”

“Ty did this?” Nana asked. She turned back to her table and busied herself in her copious handbag before I could reply. 

Irritated, I snagged the necklace and tugged it down over my face. I shook my hair free from it and twisted it around to hang around my neck. There. Much better. Stupid Ty and his stupid ideas. What was he playing at, anyway? 

“There,” I snapped at the table, Lydia already engrossed in a new conversation with Ty and Nana still rummaging in her bag. Seriously, would it kill them to focus on me for more than a second? “Is that better?” I twitched the luminous white strands that trailed down my chest, still beautiful, but lacking the glorious beauty they’d had in the mirror just before. 

He narrowed his eyes critically at me. “The shirt does alluring things to your cleavage, I’ll give you that, even if it does emphasise your wide shoulders. I still wish you’d let me trim your hair, your forehead’s getting completely lost…” He trailed off under my glare. “No?”

“I meant about the necklace.” I thought my voice was remarkably calm for someone struggling against the impulse to commit homicide. 

Beside him, Lydia laughed. “I’m sorry. I’ve been training him for months, and he’s still barely housebroken.” She turned to him. “Ty, what’s our mantra? Answer the question…”

“Nothing else.” He nodded. “Answer the question, nothing else.”

They repeated it again together before dissolving into giggles. Ty reached across the table and tugged at Lydia’s hair, and she shrieked with mock outrage. Before I knew it, a chase was in flight—though I wasn’t actually sure who was chasing whom as they ducked back into the store and circled around racks and clothes stands. 

Ty caught Lydia for an instant, and I frowned in sudden realisation. This whole pantomime was starkly familiar: ten or fifteen years ago, it had been me and Lydia. My frown deepened and I watched closely for tell-tale glances or stray caresses, but as far as I could see, it was true: this wasn’t flirting, it was sibling horseplay. 

“Everything okay?” Nana’s voice cut through my thoughts and I turned, startled. 

“Hmm? Oh. Yes.” I glanced back at the two idiots still causing chaos in the store. “Everything’s… fine.” 

Nana’s eyes twinkled with something unreadable that tugged at my stomach, and I shook my head. “I’ll just, uh, go put the necklace back.”

“Yes, dear,” she said. “You can try to do that if you like.”

I rolled my eyes at her theatrics and headed for the back of the store. I tuned out Lydia and Ty’s ridiculous noise and hunted the display shelf for a place to hang the necklace. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be any empty hooks. I ran the necklace through my fingers, glancing down at where it hung limply around my neck. It was pretty—magically so—but it lacked the sparkle, the mysterious something else I’d thought it had when Ty had first put it on me. 

On a whim, I faced the mirror and tugged the necklace back up into my hair, trying to mimic the style Ty had created. Soft strands fell over my forehead and caught my hair partially up; it wasn’t quite how he’d done it, but… I tilted my head at the mirror and my heart skipped a beat. 

Slowly, tentatively, I reached up to touch the gossamer strands where they glimmered and glowed like a slipped halo.

Something solid hit me between and across the backs of my thighs. I flailed wildly for balance and found myself clinging to—his head, as he pranced wildly around the store with me on his shoulders, shouting, “Answer the question, nothing more! Answer the question, nothing more!”

Oh saints, my stomach’s showing. I tugged awkwardly at my shirt, caught between momentary embarrassment and his wildly infectious enthusiasm. “But what’s the question?” I shouted over the din. 

He laughed. “The necklace! It works!”

I laughed back, even though I had no clue what he was talking about. “Yay?”

Ty performed some complicated sort of movement that removed me from his shoulders and ended up with me in his arms. “Yay?” he said, eyes oddly serious in contrast to the frivolity of the situation.

“Well,” I said, waving my hands as vaguely as I felt, “It works, right? So yay?” I still had no idea what ‘working’ entailed, but whatever it was, apparently this was Christmas for Ty. He hugged me tightly to him and where our skin touched fire rippled through me. Saints. I’d forgotten what it felt like to have actual proper skin contact with him, not just accidental brushes I did my best to avoid. 

It was like drowning, and it was addictive, and it was probably just my imagination that my necklace halo was glowing like it might go nova and Ty was holding me, touching me, and my hands wrapped around the back of his neck and up through his hair and the air around us burst into flame with perfect, glorious pleasure. Skin. I needed his skin. 

My stomach flipped as something happened to gravity and I had a brief impression of broken plasterboard and a flash of darkness before Ty lay me down somewhere soft, and all I cared about was the touch of his skin, because it was beautiful, and perfect, and I nearly sobbed as heat soaked through me, lighting up every fibre of my being and chasing out fear and doubt and darkness—except just there, the very seat of my logic and rationality; it remained unmoved, a cold stone trying to catch my attention in the wave of heat.

“Wait,” I gasped. I needed a moment to process this. 

He ignored me, hands rubbing at my shoulders just like they had that first time in—I took in the plush-rugged floor, the pastel green walls, the ivory couches around the perimeter of the room. We were in the day spa. I struggled semi-upright. “Wait! How on earth did we…” 

He paused, and I found the gaping hole in the floor. Vague memories of a surge of power, of Ty springing upwards ten metres or more to the roof – through the roof – through the floor… I stared at him, wide-eyed, the magma flow of heat suddenly halted. “What are you?”

“Happy,” he mumbled against my shoulder.

I whacked him gently on the back of the neck. “Answer the question,” I said.

“Nothing more,” he murmured, nuzzling my neck. My skin fizzed where his lips touched, and I had to concentrate to rap him on the back of the head. 

“Yes,” I said. “Nothing more.”

He sat back, eyes clouded with lust slowly clearing. “I am what you are, love: a child of the gods. Well, I am closer than you: my mother was a true goddess. Your grandmother is the actual godling in your family.”

My heart stalled. Child of the gods? Me? Nana?

Actually, I had to admit that made a hell of a lot of sense. Nana’s bizarre observations, her uncanny sense of timing, her ridiculous physical abilities for someone her age… I blinked, unsure what was more unsettling: that my grandmother was a godling, or that it was dead easy to believe it. 

“Hold on, wait,” I said, wriggling further out from underneath Ty. “If you’re a godling, then…” I hesitated, not sure how to phrase my question, and not sure I wanted to know the answer. A godling. No wonder girls of all ages threw themselves at him. How many women had he loved in his lifetime? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? 

Cold logic was almost as good as a cold shower. “No,” I said. “No.”

“No what?”

“No I am not going to be the latest in a long line of floozies no. Not interested. I don’t care what you are, I’m not available.”

His eyes widened, body and face alike drooping in disappointment. “But Love, you feel it, I know you do.”

“Feel what?” I snapped, arms wrapped tightly around my torso. I felt nothing that he didn’t manipulate me to feel with his stupid godly powers.

“This,” he whispered, and reached out. His fingertip connected softly with the corner of my jaw, and I swallowed at the melting heat that consumed me. His finger trailed down my neck, tracing a blissful line across the hollow of my clavicle, lighting fire oh-so-carefully down my sternum. 

He pulled away and I remembered how to breathe. 

“See?” he said, still whispering. “How can you deny it?”

I shook my head, tears burning my eyes. I don’t want this, I don’t want this, I reminded myself frantically. “It isn’t real.” My nails dug into my palms as I stared into his sea green eyes, so full of sadness they seemed a mirror of my own. “Tell me…” I drew in a shaky breath. “Answer the question.”

He nodded, gaze darting across my face as though trying to unlock an enigma. 

“How many other girls?”

He frowned, and sadness turned to confusion. 

I rolled my eyes, flicking away tears with a quick finger. “Don’t give me that. How many other girls have you played this game with, made… feel like this?” I wasn’t holding my breath for his answer. I wasn’t. 

His confusion deepened. “But Love, I couldn’t.”

It was my turn to be confused. “What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t make someone feel like this. When I touch you, I feel what you feel. I felt it that first time, do you remember? The massage?”

Saints, how I had tried to forget. His touches had been perfectly innocent, utterly professional, but the fire they’d awoken in me had left me reeling in terror; I’d never felt anything that strong in my life. 

A tiny smile played at the corners of his mouth. “That’s when I knew.”

My heart pounded in my head, my chest—and everywhere else. “Knew what?”

He was leaning closer, lips a mere breath away, and I didn’t want to be a conquest, but Lydia hadn’t been flirting with him after all, and now that I thought about it—really and truly thought about it, without the filter of frustration and jealousy—could it be? Was I really the only girl actually losing her head over this man, the only one struggling not to throw herself at his feet?

“I knew,” he whispered against my ear, and I almost couldn’t hear him through the ecstasy echoing through my body, “that you were the one.”

“I don’t believe in soulmates,” I whispered back, eyes closed, every sense in my body standing to attention as his cheek tickled against mine.

“You don’t have to.” His lips traced my jaw and I shivered. “Your heart recognises me, Love, whether your believe in it or not.”

“Love,” I whispered, fingers tightening in his hair. “Is that what this is?”

“It could be,” he said. “If you wanted it to be.”

I luxuriated in the thought for just a moment, before another one hit me. I bolted upright, narrowly avoiding a collision with his nose. “Wait just one second here, buddy. Old? You think I look tired and old?” His words from that morning rang in my ear. “Not to mention, oh, I don’t know, my too-broad shoulders and my totally lost forehead.” I glared at him, wishing that godling powers included the ability to set someone literally on fire. 

Ty laughed, a soft, throaty chuckle that sounded far too appealing. “I knew you’d take it like that, and I confess, I half hoped you’d be provoked into responding. But if you recall, I said that some things around here were getting downright old and worn. I meant, Love, your constant indifference. Not you.”

He tracked a finger over my hairline, leaving tingling fireworks in its wake.

“That’s nice,” I said, pushing his hand away, “But what about my shoulders? And my forehead?”

He frowned, confusion plain again. “What about them?”

“You…” I squirmed, uncertain how to voice my fears aloud without sounding insecure and needy. “They’re not ‘too broad’, and, well, you know…?”

“Look at me, Love,” he said. “Am I perfect?”

YES, my heart screamed. YES YOU ARE BLOODY PERFECT. But I shoved the scrambling emotions away and forced myself to look. Cold logic; cold shower; I could do this. And true, now he mentioned it, his nose leaned a bit to one side, and one eye was slightly larger than the other, and if I was going to be utterly picky then his forehead was probably a fraction too large, and… “Oh.”

Ty softened into a smile. “Answer the question, Love.”

“Lydia’s wrong,” I said.

His eyebrows quirked. “What?”

I grinned, eyes dancing. “The answer. It’s not nothing more.”

Understanding lit his features. “Oh? Then what is it?” He whisked a finger against the tip of my nose, and my eyes rolled closed in pleasure. 

“Everything,” I said. “Everything more.”

He leaned down and kissed me, and this time, I kissed him back.