Twenty-Six Mother, Daughter, Saint

TWENTY-SIX

Mother, Daughter, Saint

MARY

A h, Mary—Mer—there you—" Charles halted as he rounded the pillar. He was clad in a robe now and was nearly unrecognizable with a clean-shaven face and damp, combed hair.

Behind him, another novice—presumably his guide—fell back and knelt with Nitha on a cushion facing the ghisting.

Adalia Day turned to regard Charles. The sun and the moon were gone from her long-fingered, delicate hands.

Child , she addressed him, then her eyes drifted to me. Sister.

Tane manifested. I felt a moment of fluttering panic, my secret revealed to the novices and anyone else who might enter the shrine, but Tane had no such hesitation. She approached Adalia.

Both ghistings turned to look at Charles, as if expecting his ghisting to join them.

Charles retreated. "I'm not—I am not like her," he said aloud, waving a hand to me. To make matters worse, he spoke in Aeadine. "Mary, am I imagining this? Their saint is a ghisting? An actual ghisting, like the old Aead…"

I widened my eyes, silencing him with my stare.

Charles realized what language he'd spoken and clenched his jaw shut.

Tane spoke to Adalia, ignoring Charles. The child still sleeps within him.

Adalia nodded slowly and reached for Tane. Tane reached out in turn, their fingers brushing, and I was hit with a sudden deluge of information.

I saw a glistening sun, three moons spinning into shadow, a century of supplicants passing through this chamber. I felt instincts and impulses not my own, feelings and inclinations that came not from me but from Adalia—her purposes, her intents, her concerns and her demands.

The influx was overwhelming, but I caught Adalia's most immediate, pressing intentions.

Charles.

I started towards the highwayman, mouth open to warn him, hands already reaching to shepherd him from the room. Tane flowed after me, her form losing its solidity in the haste of her intercession.

But Adalia moved between one blink and the next. Charles's back hit the wall, framed by depictions of worshipping monks in a winter forest.

Adalia took his face in her hands and breathed on his lips.

Behind us, Nitha and the other novice raised their heads and stared.

I saw the ghisting within Charles shudder in a surge of indigo light. It flickered over his skin like lanternlight on oil, then peeled away.

Adalia took a new, secondary figure by the hands and pulled them away from Charles. The ghisting mirrored Charles in a vaguer, more blurry aspect, bound to the highwayman by dozens of spectral threads. Its face had only the suggestion of features, but it reflected Charles in shape and intention.

For a few breaths, the new ghisting's form held. Then it became smoke, drifting around the petrified highwayman.

"Mary," Charles croaked.

Tane and I merged as I shoved between my friend and the ghisten saint. The smoke of Charles's ghisting seeped over me like rain, and goosebumps flared across my entire body.

You had no right , Tane and I spoke as one, our indignation one. If I felt fear, it was distant—I thought only of Charles.

He has no right to join the ghiseau, Adalia countered. The least we can do is let the child breathe.

There is a reason the binding did not work.

When a limb breaks, do humans not set it? Adalia's sea-glass eyes held mine.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked back. Charles had found his footing again. His ghisting had vanished, though I saw wisps of indigo-grey in the whites of his haunted eyes.

Apparently satisfied with her meddling, Adalia Day retreated. Wisps of her flesh trailed back towards the pillar—her tree, I understood now, the information sifting up from the deluge of images I'd received when she and Tane touched. They had carved her tree into the very heart of the shrine, its branches in the roof and its roots beneath the floor. Then they had built their lives, their religion, around it.

You are welcome to shelter here, my children , Adalia said benevolently. So long as you heed me and do no harm to my children.

I felt Tane balk. She was a Mother Ghisting. Adalia was not—I knew that innately, even aside from the fact that the forest around the monastery was entirely mundane. In the hierarchy of ghistings, Tane was the superior, but it seemed that centuries of worship had led Adalia to believe herself outside that framework.

We needed shelter, though, and, if Adalia's condescension granted us that, we had to take it. For now.

Will your servants betray us? I asked in the unspoken speech of ghistings.

Adalia's expression was one of gentle amusement as she slipped back into her tree. Never. There are no countries, no peoples, no external loyalties here. There is only me and mine. Respect me and the outside world will never find you.

My head was too full, and my blood was still up over Charles's violation. But I forced myself to incline my head, just slightly, in respect. Then I took Charles's hand and guided him towards the door.

"It's in my head." Charles's breath was a rasp, and his shoulder wavered into mine. I slipped an arm around his back and supported him as I'd done a dozen times after nights of drinking.

Nitha and the other novice rose and followed us.

"Let's get you some place quiet," I soothed, pulling one of his arms across my shoulders and patting him gently. "All will be well."

"It's awake." Charles's voice faded out on the last word, then rasped back to life as he added, "I'm not alone in my head."