to see Eijeh sitting up in bed, his fingers knotted in his curly hair as he moaned. It had been a long time since Akos had seen Eijeh so rumpled, his shirt twisted around his torso and half his face marked by the crease of a pillowcase.
Akos hesitated at the edge of the room. Why had he come here, instead of going to his mom’s room? He’d lost the parts of Eijeh he’d been so determined to save, and now he knew that what was left of Eijeh wasn’t even related to him anyway, so what kept drawing him back?
Eijeh lifted his head, eyes locking on Akos’s face.
“Our father,” Eijeh said. “He’s attacking them.”
“Eijeh,” Akos said. “You’re confused—our father is—”
“Lazmet,” Eijeh said, rocking back and forth, still clutching his head. “Shissa. He attacked Shissa.”
“How many dead?” Akos touched Eijeh’s shoulder, and his brother—his brother?—pulled away.
“No, don’t, I need to see—”
“How many?” Akos demanded, even though deep down he knew it didn’t matter whether it was a handful or dozens or—
“Hundreds,” Eijeh said. “It’s raining glass.”
Then Eijeh burst into tears, and Akos sat on the edge of the bed.
No, it didn’t matter that it was hundreds. His path forward remained the same.
CHAPTER 29: EIJEH
“YOU HAVE TO FIND ways to ground yourself,” Sifa said to us. “Or the visions will take over. You’ll get stuck in all the possibilities and you won’t be able to live a life.”
We answered, “Would it be so bad? To live a thousand different lives instead of your own?”
She narrowed her eyes at us, this woman who was our mother, an oracle, and a stranger all at once. We had ordered the death of her husband; we had suffered the loss of that man ourselves. How odd it was, to be responsible for so much pain, and to have suffered as a direct result of that responsibility, all at once. As our identities melded more and more, we felt more profoundly the contradictions inherent in our being. But there was nothing to be done about it; the contradictions existed, and had to be embraced.
“Whatever made you, made you for a purpose,” she said. “And it wasn’t to become a vessel for other people’s experiences; it was to have your own.”
We shrugged, and that’s when the images came.
We are in the body of a man—short, stocky, and standing before a cart full of books. The smell of dust and pages is in the air, and shelves tower above him. He places a heavy volume on a tray that sticks out from the shelf, and keys in a code on a device he carries. The tray zooms off to the shelf where the book is supposed to go—a story above his head, and to the left.
He sighs, and walks to the end of the aisle to look out the window. The city—which we recognize as Shissa, in Thuvhe—is full of buildings that hover so far above the ground that the iceflower fields beneath it look like mere patches of color amid the snow. The buildings appear to be hanging from the clouds themselves. Across the way is a tiered diamond-shaped structure of glass that glows green at night, lit from within. To its left, a curved mammoth lit up soft white, like the land beneath it.
It is a beautiful place. We know it.
We are not a man anymore. We are a woman, short and shivering in a stiff vest of Shotet armor.
“Why does anyone live in this damn country?” she says to the man next to her. His teeth are chattering audibly.
“Iceflowers,” the man said with a shrug.
She flexes her hands in an attempt to bring feeling back to her fingers.
“Shh,” he says.
Up ahead, a Shotet soldier has her ear pressed to a door. She closes her eyes for a moment, then pulls back, and motions the others forward. They slam a metal cylinder into the door, several times, to force it open. The lock pops off and clatters to the cement floor. Beyond the door is a control room of sorts, like the nav deck of a transport vessel.
A scream pierces the air. We rush forward.
We are standing at a window, one hand pressed to cold glass, the other pulling a curtain back. Above us is the city of Shissa, a cluster of giants that drape over us always. It has been our colorful comfort in the night ever since we were a child. The sky without buildings in it seems bare and empty, so we do not