Chapter 17: The Stone's Lullaby
A Cleansing Truth
I watched Jasmin sleep for minutes, listening to the chaos outside, begging for everything to stop. She was safe, but what of the town? Leaving her side was out of the question, but my heart wrenched at the thought I couldn't help.
The alarm bell finally stopped ringing. Everything went quiet.
A deep breath from somewhere inside me served as the last bit of levelling I needed to begin the process of caring for her. Lifting her from the floor was effortless. I initially attributed it to her instinctive move to grip my shoulders, but that didn't quite feel truthful.
By some miracle, our bedroom in the manor was nearly pristine, only the vase with the mixed bouquet having been knocked over. The water from the vase had long since poured onto the floor, but the bed was clean, the windows were intact, and the space was perfect to let Jasmin rest.
Just as I was about to lay Jasmin into the bed, I recalled the blood staining her skin and clothes and moved into the washing room instead. Unlike the bedroom, it was a disaster, but the bathing basin seemed to be still intact and otherwise unharmed.
"Good enough," I mumbled and laid Jasmin into the basin gently. "I'm sorry love, but the clothes must come off so I can clean you properly." My whispered apology prompted no response from her, and I set to work.
Jasmin's skin was pristine, no new scars appearing from the fight with the beasts, but it wasn't the same. I couldn't pinpoint it as I removed one article after another from her body. At the last, all that remained were the cloth wraps on her forearms.
The wraps were soaked in blood, still wet where the rest of her blood was dried. Was it her blood on the wraps? She made so many of the larabrins bleed. Maybe it was theirs?
"Darling, I'm sorry again," I said as I began removing the wraps, "but I have to make sure you are okay." The motions were careful, intentional. I held her arm in one hand and the wrap in the other as I circled it round and round, releasing her from her armour.
It was obvious as her skin came into view that the blood hadn't been hers. Equally obvious was that her silverthorn scars had intensified. Both the black webs on the surface and the silver veins beneath had new branches, working their way through most every inch of skin. It baffled me that the poison never went further than her wrists and her elbows.
My lips met her hand. "Princess. If it is the last thing I do, I will make your mother pay."
Once I had fully cleaned the blood from her skin, I carried Jasmin back to the bedroom and laid her in the bed. I gently kissed her forehead before standing and setting to work. The house was a mess, and it needed proper cleaning.
The last shard of shattered glass, the last twig of splintered wood, and the last body of a dead beast were outside as Aster arrived to check in.
"Goddesses around us, you're alright." Straight to the point. "Where is the wife? She's supposed to be —"
I held up a hand and smiled weakly. "I don't know how long it'll take, but she should be okay."
Filling Aster in on the state of things was harder than I expected, though I only had to stop and cry five times, so I counted that as a success. She helped with the final few troubles with the house as we talked, insisting that I take breaks as often as possible. Darkness fell around us as we worked, and I was relieved to find the lighting in the house still worked.
When all was finished, I led Aster to the bedroom where Jasmin slept. "She's alive. A bit worn out. Did her best. If not for her, I'd probably be dead."
I realised Jasmin's hands were outside the blanket, unwrapped, a moment too late. Aster would know what the silver and black markings were, and a slight gasp let me know she'd seen them.
"Was that from tonight?" A reasonable question. If it weren't, Jasmin would already be dead, and we both knew it. And if it were, she'd have at most two suns.
And yet. "No." Aster's face twisted, and I did what I could to explain. "She doesn't know it's Queen's Heart, Aster. She thinks it's a curse, one she's had for eighteen years."
"What about the hair? Are they related?" I'd almost forgotten that Jasmin's hair had gone from an impressively dark mop to a silver tapestry. It was the least worrisome detail of it all.
"Dear cousin," I sighed, "if I knew anything, I likely couldn't tell you."
"Because of the 'divine leash' you mentioned?" Her face, still worried, turned grave. "Or because she's the disgraced Lady Myrtia, Jasmin Hawthorne?"
I'd known she knew. That had been obvious when she brought up Jasmin's nobility earlier in the sun. "Both. But something has been going on with both of us since the moment we met. Actually, seven suns before we met. Perhaps fifteen years before we met."
"Oddly specific," Aster mused grimly. "If I tell you something I know, can you tell me something you do?"
"Sure. I'll start. Afina Thornleaf, the first one, was married to a goddess." Once I started, I couldn't quite stop. I told Aster everything. She was safe. And there was little chance I would destroy her as a person by telling her any of it.
Salora. The visions. Rose. Jasmin. Afina, the blue-haired warrior. The five flowers. Vaelis.
Each new detail poured out of me before Aster could ask about the one before it. When all was said and I was out of words, Aster stared dumbly at me. "I didn't expect you to know more than me," she said after a beat. "Then all I really have for you is that there's a warrant for Jasmin's execution, on sight. I intercepted the warrant a few suns before the two of you arrived, and decided to hide it. Eyes only. Something told me it was important.
"Then the two of you showed up. I would've arrested Jasmin on the spot had she been travelling alone. Instead, she's here, married to my best friend's daughter, carting around a reincarnated goddess who seems to have lost their marbles. It baffles the mind, really.
"You're safe here as long as you need. And with the new hair, I don't think anyone will recognise her." A long silence passed between us before Aster added. "I'm glad you're safe. Get some rest now. The town's going to want your attention tomorrow."
A Town's Loving Rhythm
Morning found me seated uncomfortably in the chair Jasmin had used while keeping vigil over me after my most recent collapse. On the brighter side, it found me resting softly over her still resting body. That meant I hadn't fallen out of it in my sleep, which had been a concern as I sat holding her hand the night before.
The sounds of movement elsewhere in the house were all that moved me from her side.
Shuffling about the grand foyer of the house were several people of Blue Stone I hadn't met yet and two familiar faces. Ingrid the fishmonger and Aidan the bookkeeper's son were pointing about and directing traffic. Folks were busy at work, wordlessly replacing windows shattered in the attack, measuring doorways that had been smashed apart, and much more.
I watched for several minutes as the activity continued. The people of Blue Stone were accustomed to this sort of thing, apparently, as they had a rhythm and something of an unspoken language that guided the work. Baffled that they didn't have better things to do, I just stood in awe.
Eventually I realised they were working in the relative darkness of whatever bits of early dawn light happened to creep in. I lit the room with my cold-flame – an action that was becoming so natural I didn't have to think about it – and all eyes traced across the space to settle on me.
Their awed expressions spoke volumes. Had they expected me to fall again? That would be fair. Most of them hadn't been around for Aster beating me into a finely crafted warrior. But there was something else. Did they know about Jasmin?
Rolling up my sleeves, I moved properly into the space. "There's not much I can do for Ja— Salora just now," I said by way of hopeful clarification, "but I'm stronger than I look, and it is my family's house. So Aidan, Ingrid. Direct my hands."
The air shifted as I joined the work. Faces were smiling. Feet were stepping a bit higher. Everything was much lighter, and not simply because extra hands make gentler work.
An oddly familiar beat found its way into the sounds around me, and I tried to place the sound as I positioned a fully new window fixture with the help of apparently a prominent carpenter in town. They had noticed the beat as well, it seemed, as they were tapping their foot on their ladder right in tune with the song that was just beyond my grasp.
I had worried for just a moment as the carpenter pulled out a hammer to set some nails for mounting the window fixture, but their skills dropped my jaw to my chest as they nearly soundlessly sank their nails in a single strike each. Nudging my mouth closed with the claws of the hammer, the carpenter winked at me and began descending the ladder.
That's when the pieces fell into place.
As the carpenter's steps down the ladder hit in an irregular pattern, I recognised the start of a familiar tune Da had always sung when I had trouble sleeping. The same bar-song he and Ma had sung in their courtship. My eyes settled on various hands and feet around the room. Everyone was moving to the same song.
Rather than interrupt whatever it was that kept them in time, I slid quickly down the ladder and crossed the floor to Ingrid. "Don't say anything too loudly because I don't want them to stop," I whispered the words a bit too loudly, but no one else seemed to notice. "They're working to a song I know."
Ingrid's brows raised, shrinking her forehead to a thin line. "You noticed, did you? It's how we get more than nothing done after a great storm. Where'd you learn the song? Aster said you never knew the previous Lady Thornleaf."
"Da sang it as a lullaby when I was tiny." Ingrid chuckled at that. "And as a celebration song when I was old enough a lullaby wasn't needed."
"I thought," she said, tapping her chin, "that your Da was from deep phobward. I take it the tune was special to him because of her?"
My heart warmed at the thought of Ma and Da dancing with wild abandon, flailing about and almost destroying everything around them in the process. It was an image I'd conjured a thousand times when I hummed the song at the more lively pace of a bar jig.
"Yes," I said at last, "he loved her so, and they apparently shared many memories of that song."
Ingrid looked about herself for a moment before leaning in. "If you don't think the noise will bother your lovely wife, call out as loudly as you can 'What do we drink to, sailors?' and watch what happens."
"Will I regret this?" I teased. When Ingrid shook her head, I lifted my voice to its fullest and shouted. "What do we drink to, sailors?"
"Love!" They all shouted back, like they'd been waiting. "Love and The Stone!"
The song picked up exactly as I recalled from my childhood, but instead of Da's voice by himself, it was a whole crowd of folks who loved the song as much as each other. As a bonus, they started moving faster as well.
"Well, Lady Thornleaf, it seems you're a right fit for the fine folks hereways after all," Ingrid smiled, not joining in the song. "How's about you and I go make a lunch for this fine crowd. Most of them have never had the pleasure of your cooking."
I learned from Ingrid while we were in the kitchen that most of the town had been fairly unharmed by the larabrin attack. Between Jasmin's training the guards and our collective preparation efforts, most of the beasts had been stopped before they made it a few blocks into the town.
That didn't answer my questions about why they went after Jasmin specifically. At least the night I'd been attacked outside Powell's Square it made a measure of sense as I'd been travelling in the open alone. But they had sought Jasmin out. They had crashed through our windows, almost destroyed Thornleaf Manor. And they had ignored me until I stood between them and her.
Half the available towns folk were working to manage repairs in the aftermath, while the other half were assessing human damage. When they realised that the greatest property damage was at the manor, two dozen volunteered to help with Ingrid and Aidan volunteering to supervise.
When they'd learned what happened to Jasmin, every one of them was mortified. She really had made an impression on the folks around town. And what had I done? Spent two moons studying how not to make a fool of myself.
Had I known it was this easy to get a town to like me, I might've spent more time at the local tavern and less time worrying about the proper depth to bow in pants or curtsy in skirts. Still, I was pleased that I'd done something good for the spirits of the town.
The moment lunch was done and the people sent on their way, I returned to Jasmin's side where I stayed the rest of that sun.
A Fivefold Amber Plea
Vanara was leaning over me, staring without words when the sun shone in my eyes the next morning. I was back in the same position I had been the previous morning, but Vanara's return was new.
"Am I speaking to Vanara, Va, Vaelis, or someone else right now?" I asked, not moving my head from Jasmin's midsection.
"That depends. Am I speaking to Afina or someone else right now?" Her tone answered my question well enough. "Though I believe I know the answer, I would genuinely love your thoughts, goddess-lover."
"I wasn't certain at first," truth, mostly, "but I think at this rate, I must accept who I am," a lie, entirely, "and if that's not enough for Salora's not-quite-sister, then you can go back to Thornwood Hallow and wait for one of my sisters to come get you," the threat was idle, but I hoped it would be enough, "or better yet, a different one of yours."
"So you do remember," her tone was flat, "but does she?"
That was enough for me to lift my head and sit upright. "I don't know, Vaelis. Does your sister remember she's a goddess? Maybe if you had been here to help, you'd have your answers!"
She feigned hurt at my outburst. I assumed it was feigned anyway. "What a shame this new version of you is so mean. "
"Any idea how long you have before you lose yourself again? I have important questions."
Her expression tightened. "How would I know, Afina. I haven't been fully myself for at least a lifetime. Even a second is a luxury these suns."
"Fine. What are the sacred gardens? Are they real?"
She raised a brow. "You were in one, not three moons past, and you question their existence?"
My deep sigh nearly shook my whole body. "Point taken. Where are the others?"
I knew the answer. At the far corners of Lafleur, but I needed to hear it from her or Salora or anyone who would know.
"Mine is near the home your parents made, or it was," her face was soft nostalgia. "Draethis kept hers at the tip of the Huntress's arrow. Aurelin's was elsewhere." She drifted off on the word elsewhere. Still present, but trying to recall something, she didn't mention the final goddess.
Vaelis had forgotten the fifth goddess like she often forgot herself, just as Salora had only managed to say that there was another. Or perhaps she couldn't say the names of the goddesses unless I already knew of them.
"I can't promise that I'll fix this, Vaelis, but I will take care of Salora if it kills me." She looked at me, her violet eyes as clear as I'd ever seen them, and offered a pained smile. "And I'm worried it will do just that."
"Who can say, Afina. Salora has returned, as have I. Perhaps there is a way you may live and she may not die."
Vaelis's warm hand on my shoulder was a hollow comfort, but I accepted it quietly. Before long, she'd return to being Vanara, and that hurt almost as much as knowing Salora's fate. Jasmin's fate. The impossible truth.
The remainder of the sun passed with Vanara keeping me company and occasionally stepping out for some purpose. Jasmin's condition seemed to improve, but she was still unconscious. She'd waited for me sevensuns and more, time and again. I couldn't imagine it before, but now I understood what it meant to desperately wish for everything to be okay.
Recalling the sun before, I sang my parents' lullaby to Jasmin softly, hoping it would serve her dreams more pleasant than my own. And preferably far more pleasant than my waking reality.
Eve and morn and far and wide
No shadow here may long abide
For war and tears will pass alone
Pass from here, love, in The Stone.O, calm your heart, and still your breath
I'll watch you, dear, until my death
While waves and wind and sorrow groan
You're safe, my love, within The Stone.A burning hearth, a hand to grasp
Love and joy, we'll have at last
The queendom quake, the stars all shone
But here we'll sleep within The Stone.O, rest your heart, here by my own
No cruel fate may bind our souls
While waves and wind and sorrow groan
You're home, my love, home in The Stone.Goddesses spin moonlit threads
They wrap us warm within our beds
The queen's harsh words, chaff wind-blown
Hush now and dream, here in The Stone.O, bring your heart near to my own.
Still your breath, and calm your tone.
No wind nor waves nor sorrow groan,
Not here, my love, not in The Stone.
By the end of it, I was sobbing around the words, wishing that they were true enough to have kept Jasmin safe. Begging that I would be able to hold her, kiss her, smile with her again. It became a prayer, pleading with the goddesses, all five of them, to save the woman I loved.
Of course, I had no proof that they were out there. I knew Salora was gone – or there with me, who could say – and Vaelis was barely coherent even when she wasn't Vanara. Still, I would've given anything in that moment to see Jasmin open her eyes.
But she didn't. Instead, she lay there wordlessly as the sun fell and night rose. I heard people come and go – Ingrid and Aster, most likely – but my attention rested with the woman I had to save because I couldn't protect her.
I didn't know when the sun came up. But it did. And I was still sitting at Jasmin's side, holding her hand.
"Roisin," it was a whisper, quiet enough I wasn't certain I heard it.
Her face was still, her eyes shut, but I responded anyway. It was our way. "Jasmin."
"Can you let go of my hand?" Her lips barely moved with the words. "Or at least loosen your grip. I think you might break it."
Finally, her lips curled in a weak smile. Another second passed before she finally opened her beautiful amber eyes.