Chapter Five WITCHING MOON

Chapter Five

WITCHING MOON

Week Two, Day One

Year 3000

Sachi didn't know how to fail.

To some, that might have seemed like a good thing, a statement of eternal victory. But it wasn't, because of course it didn't mean she never failed . It simply meant she didn't know what to do when she did. How to pick herself up and carry on instead of falling to self-recriminating pieces.

It wasn't a flaw she liked to consider, much less admit, but there it was, all the same. Though it couldn't exactly be called a fault, could it? It wasn't as if she simply disliked the idea of being terrible at something, anything. No. She'd spent the last twenty years acutely aware that failure of any sort meant something worse than defeat—the shame of punishment. Unendurable pain.

So was it really any wonder she couldn't abide the thought of it?

She clenched her fists and pressed the naked soles of her feet harder against the bare stone of her chamber floor, anchoring herself in her dream. Her favorite chair by her favorite window was bathed in late-afternoon sunlight. Even with her eyes closed, she felt its warmth on her face, seeping through her velvet dressing gown.

She could do this. She must .

But she hadn't counted on Elevia's warning to hold so wretchedly true . Sachi's previous forays into the Dream had been tentative explorations of but a small corner of it, like splashing up to your ankles in a tide pool. Now, she was trying to dive right through the heart of it, in search of one tiny beam of light.

How did one begin to search the vastness of all the oceans for a single shell?

Perhaps this was more like Zanya's gift of traveling through the Void than Sachi had previously considered. That seemed to require certain levels of acquaintance—with the destination, with the journey. Even with her companions.

And so it was with Sachi's dreamwalks. The dreams of those she knew were like living tableaux, staged masquerades into which she could slide with no effort, as if her very knowledge of them had laid their souls bare to her. She'd never even attempted it with dreams of an absolute stranger. She saw them sometimes, in that formless space that she knew as the Dream—blurry bubbles of emotion that seethed with nostalgia or desire, fear or confusion. Peering into them was like trying to look through a thickly frosted pane of glass. She'd never dared to try to penetrate those barriers.

Maybe searching for someone was bound by the same limitations. Since she'd never met the Phoenix, it could be sheer folly to even attempt to find them in this boundless—Everlasting—dreamscape. But she had to try.

She had to, for Ash's sake. She had to do everything in her power to prevent another showdown between him and the Betrayer. Ash wouldn't survive it. Not because he couldn't stand against his brother, but because seeing the earth torn asunder again would kill him.

"They're not really brothers, you know."

The cheerful voice materialized behind her. Sachi whirled around, but saw only bright, unending emptiness.

"Sevastyan was an only child. His mother wanted many more, but that was not to be."

The rasp of stone on stone enveloped Sachi, along with the distinctive crackle—and warmth—of a fire. When she turned this time, a woman sat before her, grinding some sort of large grain or kernel on a wide, concave rock.

The woman was old , with sun-scorched skin the color of tea-stained paper. It gave her the contradictory appearance of being tough and delicate at the same time, with deep creases in her cheeks and around her eyes, especially when she smiled. But her hands—about those, there could be no doubt. They were still strong, capable. Her hair was long and gray, held back from her face in simple braids secured by leather ties worn soft from age, just like her. She was dressed very much like Elevia or Ulric, in homespun and leather and furs, except that every item she wore was a different shade of purple.

The woman hummed as she finished grinding the dried grain, gathered it in one aged palm, and dropped it into a kettle boiling over the fire. She smiled as she stirred, then finally settled back on her heels with a sound of satisfaction.

Sachi stepped closer, drawn in by the sweet domesticity of the scene, warmed as much by the woman's smile as by the fire. "May I?" she asked, indicating an empty spot on the furs beside her.

The woman looked up at Sachi with a mild confusion that quickly gave way to joy. "Of course! Sit, sit. There is always room for you at my fire, and the night meal is almost ready."

The furs were plush, heated by the flames, and Sachi pulled them around her body as she settled in. "It smells delicious."

"It's venison stew." The old woman leaned forward to stir the kettle again, groaning softly as she shifted her weight. "I had to trade three coils of good, sturdy rope for this haunch."

"That's very expensive." The words left Sachi's tongue without thought, unbidden, but she knew at once that they were true.

"Aye, very." The woman looked up and winked at her. "But wait until you taste it. The first stag of Isere's Moon is good luck, you know."

Sachi didn't , but the mention of Isere snagged on a memory—standing under the trees with Ash in the Midnight Forest, watching magic drift down around them as he told her the story of the lovers who became their moons. A story his grandmother had told him as a boy.

"You're her," Sachi whispered. "His grandmother."

"My name is Saga." Her eyes twinkled with mischief—and love. "Tell me, does he still sneak extra puddings?"

"He doesn't have to," Sachi answered honestly. "The Dragon can have anything he wants. Everything."

"Hmph." Saga frowned skeptically as she turned away and prodded the fire beneath the kettle.

Sachi stared at the old woman, bewildered. How could this be? The Dream was a mysterious place of wild wonders where almost anything was possible, but not this.

Never this.

In all her many lessons, Sachi had never once heard of an intact spirit dwelling within the Dream. The priests taught that death was as much of a homecoming as it was another beginning, a return to the Dream so complete that the departed became one with it. Their very soul would melt into the Dream to await what came next.

But here was a woman who had lived long before the time of the gods, stirring a spitting fire back to blaze under a fragrant stew.

"I'm sorry," Sachi whispered. "But ... are you real ?"

"The cheek!" Saga gasped in outrage, but it turned to laughter before Sachi could hasten to apologize. "To be honest, it seems more fitting that I should ask you ."

"That's fair." The first step, perhaps, to determining the answer to Sachi's question was to get more details. "Where are we? And when?"

Saga looked out, past the fire. As she did, shadows began to appear in the nothingness, shadows that swirled until they took the shapes of sky and earth, buildings and animals. People.

"This was the best day of my life," she murmured, smiling. "Not the greatest or the most important, but the one filled with the most pure happiness. The most peace."

Perhaps the priests in the capital were wrong, and this was the real promise of returning to the Dream. Your own little corner of it, where you could relive your happiest moments. No troubles or strife, just a quiet, gentle rest.

Sachi didn't know.

"Now, then." Saga's gnarled hand settled over Sachi's, warm and seemingly very real, indeed. "Tell me—how is my boy?"

"Worried," she answered immediately. "About so many things. Whether he'll have to fight again. Whether his efforts will be enough this time to secure a victory. Whether the cost will be too high, even if victory comes."

"Those are far from idle concerns, my child. They are worries born of wisdom. Experience."

"I know. But it's hard because I can't help him."

The woman's brows knit in confusion. "Why not? Aren't you his consort? His mate?"

"I'm ..." But the words died on her lips. Sachi couldn't bring herself to admit the truth, not even here. Not even to a woman who'd been dead for thousands of years.

I'm not enough.

She didn't say it, but Ash's grandmother nodded anyway. "I understand. It's impossible, isn't it?"

Sachi felt helpless, adrift in the face of her own shortcomings. "Then how am I to do it?"

Saga seemed to consider that for a long time. Then she said, "Realize, Sachielle, that this may not be about skill, or preparation, or even luck. That the task you see before you is not your true test."

Sachi's head was beginning to spin, and she shook it to clear it. "Then what is?"

"You must learn to be who you are." Saga's eyes burned, bored into hers. "Are you ready to walk this path?"

"No," she confessed. "I'm scared . Terrified."

"No. You doubt, and that's not the same thing at all." The old woman's hand tightened around hers. "I cannot give you the answers you seek, for they lie within you. Only you can decide what they are."

Sachi's mind reeled. It didn't really seem like the sort of thing a person could just decide , whether or not to be a primordial force of existence older and more powerful than the entirety of the High Court.

Saga cocked her head to one side. "A shame you can't stay for the meal, child."

Sachi opened her mouth to ask why, but sudden pain jabbed her in the side. The Dream melted, stripped away in an instant, until only the vaguest sense of it remained.

She opened her eyes in her bed, where Zanya had rolled over and shoved an elbow into Sachi's ribs. Gently, Sachi slipped into the space Zanya had vacated and let her have the rest of the bed, giving her room to sprawl.

It left Sachi cuddled close to Ash. As he looped an arm around her waist and murmured sleepily, she studied his face in the soft moonlight, looking for any hint of resemblance to the woman she'd seen in the Dream. They had similar eyes, she supposed, and the same nose. And Sachi could tell that, had he grown old instead of taking his place among a pantheon of immortal gods, Ash would have carried the same laughing lines around his eyes that Saga had worn.

Could Sachi do this? Could she accept that this might be her destiny, as well? She'd barely even begun to entertain the notion of a life beyond Dalvish's court, beyond her suicide mission to destroy the Dragon. Now she had to try to fathom an eternal existence?

It seemed too much to comprehend, but she knew she could do it, because she would have Ash and Zanya. She wouldn't have to watch and mourn as injury or old age stole them away, leaving her behind with an empty bed and even emptier heart. She would spend the ages with them.

She desperately wanted to spend the ages with them.

Was that enough to unlock her destiny? It couldn't be, or the unfettered Light of the Dream would be pouring through her at this very moment. And Sachi didn't feel any different.

You must learn to be who you are.

Perhaps that wasn't as metaphorical as it had sounded at first blush. After all, Sachi knew what she'd been trained to be, what she'd been meant to do to complete her assigned tasks. But those were external definitions, forced on her by a king who hadn't cared what lay beneath Sachi's blue eyes and fair skin. To him, she was merely a tool to be sharpened.

So who was she, really? She enjoyed music and dancing, the feel of soft fabrics against her skin. Sunrises, though she relished sleep a bit too much to see many of them. She couldn't abide bullies or bear to see injustices go unchecked, and sometimes she worried that the skillful manipulation that had been part of her training had seeped into her very pores, become a part of her that could never be torn away.

She loved Zanya, who had always been so fiercely protective no matter how scared she was. And Ash, who was equally fierce and so lonely that it permeated everything about his life, like ice slowly opening cracks in a solid wall.

Silently, Sachi recited everything she knew about herself, repeating the words until she drifted back into a quiet, dreamless sleep.