SONG of EMBER

36

HUNGER

🙜

"Is it magical? Some sort of spell?”

“Ember, please—we may speak or walk,” Ky huffed at last, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “I have not the breath for both.”

“Far enough, then,” decided Ember, plopping down in the middle of the road.

He shrugged off Fishbiter’s belt and the empty pack, taking a swig from the water flask to quell his thirst and stifle his growling stomach; the crystal seemed to replenish a bit of his energy, but a gnawing ache reminded him that he had not eaten in a day and a half.

He briefly considered washing some of the grime from his bare skin as well, but tempting as it was, he could justify it to himself—not when it was so important to Ky. At least they were out of the damp.

The sirena sat beside him with a whoosh of a sigh, snagged the flask, and took three deep draughts, water dribbling down her chin. After pouring a bit more over her fingers and smoothing it along her face and arms, she handed it back to him and closed her eyes.

He waited impatiently for several seconds, and then prompted, “Well?”

Ky blinked, glancing down at her clasped hands. She sat with crossed legs, black hair draped across her shoulders, looking unusually poised.

“Is there anything in your life that you are wishing for?” Before he could reply she added, “Something, perhaps, that you are believing you cannot have. But you are wishing so badly that you know… you will not be whole without it. That if you cannot have it, life is not worth the living?”

Her words were so earnest that Ember sat back and thought seriously about the question. It stumped him for a few minutes, until the most obvious answer occurred to him—one he was reluctant to mention.

“Yes,” he admitted slowly. “I wish my mother was alive.”

She stared at him, motionless.

Listening.

Ember cringed and glanced up at the arched ceiling above them, unhappy that their discussion had already taken such a disagreeable turn in his direction.

“She died when I was ten years old, I think. My elder sister cared for me. For a long time after, I couldn’t remember… what it felt like to smile.” He hesitated, struggling to find the mortal words to describe how her death had made him feel. “She wasn’t always happy… but she always found something to laugh about. She was beautiful, like a ray of sunlight, and when she left she took that sunlight with her. The world was dark to me, even when the skies were clear. I felt as if there was a… an empty hole in my life, after that. And whenever I tried to fill it with something else, it never quite fit. I guess I’ve just learned to live with that hole… I don’t think about it so much anymore.”

He paused for thought and then decided he’d said more than enough, crossing his arms and ducking his chin to his chest. Even now, a little of that hollow ache returned; the ache that had always been there, and never really left. His sister’s departure had left its own empty place, and after a time he could no longer tell them apart.

He was simply alone.

“A hole,” Ky repeated, tilting her head. “An empty place… yes. You will be understanding a little of what I speak.”

Ember looked up, flushing angrily. “A little?”

Her pale hand flashed out and snatched his wrist, offering a squeeze of comfort.

Ember shifted, but let her hand remain, somewhat mollified. He had become surprisingly accustomed to her touch: it was still strange to him in many ways, but a fresh familiarity was beginning to make an impression on his mind. Her clammy hands and black eyes no longer frightened him, nor did their odd acquaintance seem so unlikely after all that had occurred under Sisters Mountain.

“I apologize,” she said quickly. “I am not saying that your sorrows are lesser sorrows. I forget that you are young… not tasted so much death as I.”

Tasted so much death.

He wondered if the irony of that phrase was lost on her, or if she meant it on purpose.

Either way, it gave him chills.

“And,” he said stiffly, flicking a bit of dried blood from his arm, “what is this thing you cannot live without?”

Another long moment passed, and Ky took an impossibly deep breath, her fingers twitching in her lap. “I am thinking… what I seek… is what you call a treasure, Ember.”

The words slowly took root in his mind, and a few possible interpretations presented themselves. “What sort of treasure?”

“There is more myth than truth among my clan, but this treasure, I think, is what makes men so strong.” He suddenly noticed something flashing in her fingers: one of the coins from the treasure room. “The men who are living here, before—when they build their nest in this mountain.”

“So this treasure is ours,” Ember said, darkly suspicious.

“No, Ember, it was ours…” She twisted this way and that as she spoke. “But no longer. I hear stories of a season when my clan and many others were in possession of it, and our power was as great as that of your kind.”

“Power? You mean magic?”

Ky hummed thoughtfully, and then said, “Yes. Magic.”

“I don’t know anything about magic,” he protested.

“No, but those before you do, when men are not so scattered. All this I am learning from songs and riddles, for we may not speak of it outright.”

Her cryptic explanation reminded Ember of the villager’s whispered tales of a cursed people, and Hunter’s warning that those who had seen the river-folk were likely to keep it to themselves. He cleared his throat, unsettled.

“Did we—did men steal this treasure from the sirens?”

“I was told only that it was lost,” she said quietly, shrugging. “Not stolen.”

Ember’s stomach tightened, and he stared hard at her. “Told by whom?”

Her fingers froze, and the coin stopped flashing, loosely balanced between her thumb and ring finger. She continued fiddling a few moments later, more slowly, and traced the buffed edge with the pads of her fingers.

“Hmmm,” she murmured. “The eldest of the clans.”

“The eldest? Your sister?”

“Ah, no,” Ky chided gently. “Silveli has seen only…”

Her lips pursed and she blinked slowly, flicking her fingers until it amounted to two hundred and ninety-three.

“...this many summers.”

Ember couldn’t help a low whistle. “That’s a long time to be alive.”

“No, she is young, though perhaps wiser than I.” She was still gazing down at the coin, but a peculiar strain crossed her face; her jaw flexed twice, and the corners of her mouth creased.

Not wiser, Ember thought, the back of his neck crawling. More cunning, I think, but not wiser.

“This elder has seen so many seasons pass that not even he can be remembering them all.” She paused for thought, and then said gently, “But he is… before he is dying, I mean… both wise and good. And he tells me a story about this mountain. A story which is giving me hope, that what I seek is not gone from us forever.”

“The treasure, you mean.”

“Yes.” She resumed her wriggling, and Ember was hard-pressed not to grab her arm to make her stop. “He sings to me then, Ember. He sings a song as old as the world itself. Older than time. If only you are hearing his voice, you will surely know why I wish to find the mountain’s door. For I, too, have a hole that cannot be filled—an empty place—though until then I am not knowing it. His song… makes everything so clear. It is… ah, I cannot describe it to you, nor sing as he can, for my voice is as dust to his, and the words are slipping from my memory. It is like a bright light breaking through clouds in the sky, or flashing through the crest of a wave.”

A lump formed in his throat. He had no clear idea of what she meant, but a memory glimmered in her eyes and the longing in her speech was plain enough. He saw that yearning etched on her face—the way she had looked at him those many days ago while he stood on his doorstep to watch her leave.

“I am knowing, at once, that I must find this treasure for myself, for the empty place… as you say… is more empty every day. Sometimes I fear it may consume me from within and leave nothing but a shell behind. The elder tells me that he has held this treasure within himself, long ago, and that if I am coming here… I will see the truth in what he speaks.”

“You didn’t need to bring me all the way here just to open the door, did you?”

Ky flipped the coin over in her hands, admiring its bronzed gleam.

“No,” she confessed. “I am thinking of your kind must be here… to return our treasure.”

Ember pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers and shut his eyes. “...why?”

“Is this not your mountain?”

“No!” he growled, confused and exhausted.

That gave her pause.

“You have as much right to this nest as any other man,” she insisted at last. “I have no hope of taking your treasure myself.”

“I suppose the elder told you this as well?”

“Yes.”

Ember opened his eyes and glanced sideways at her, still pinching his forehead. “Did he tell you anything of use?”

“There is much he has to tell,” Ky said calmly. “I do not think I am knowing it all.”

“What if he was only charming you?” Ember cautioned her, thinking of the siren which lay dead in the winding halls. “Maybe there is no treasure, no way to restore your... empty place. If you don’t know what it looks like, where it is, or how to find it—”

“I know it is true,” Ky interrupted, clenching her hands around the coin. “He cannot be lying.”

“How’s that?”

"A siren who is not wise or good hears of his stories, and when the elder is called to atone for his words, he sings the same song to a gathering of the clans. Only, they do not let him finish his beautiful story," she whispered, her eyes glimmering. "If only… perhaps they will be wishing as I do… and come with me here…"

Ember could not speak, could barely think. Fragmented images flashed across his mind—not memories, or at least not his memories—of vast and stormy waters, and a pouring rain above, and darkness below. Deep, deep darkness, surrounded by salt and slimy weeds, where the water was cold and the rain could not reach.

"They take the elder into the deep waters and rend his flesh, and the water turns to blood and stinks of death, and they sing for the fishes, and the fishes come, and he is devoured." Ky’s description was so detached and her words so very quick that Ember knew at once it was a memory she found troubling and did not wish to live again. She lowered her voice even further, and this time it trembled slightly. "The clans are very bitter about the loss of their treasure, though so few remember it. It is never to be spoken of, even by an elder."

Ember took an unsteady breath. "And… you think I can find this treasure of yours?"

A somber twinkle livened her gaze. "If you wish to," she conceded. "But I have never doubted you."

He stared at her for a moment, disturbed. If what this elder said is true, and some powerful relic or other was lost to the siren kind long ago… all of these men must have been killed for the sake of reclaiming this treasure. Maker’s breath!

The words of the lonely, twisted beast that had stalked them through the mountain suddenly did not seem so absurd.

"What is it?" he demanded, sweat dampening his shirt. "Anything! Do you know anything more about this treasure?"

"I know only that it is mine, and I must have it," she crooned, an obvious attempt to soothe him. It halfway worked, and he sat in bothered silence for several minutes, watching her fuss with a hole in the knee of her trousers. He wondered if it had been torn during her frantic scramble to escape the mad siren.

"Could any man give it to you? Any man at all?"

Ky shrugged.

"Then why me?"

She met his stare, her eyes shiny in the dark. "Because… I like you, Ember."

I like you, Ember.

It filled him with the same mixture of confusion and anticipation it had in his old cabin while she sat across the table from him, munching garden greens.

Then she added, almost too softly to hear, "And your river is far."

When no explanation seemed forthcoming, he inquired, "From what?"

Ky turned the coin over in her hands one last time before tossing it away. It bounced down the hall and disappeared into the darkness, the sharp metallic echoes ringing long after it was gone. When the last echo faded, the siren spoke.

"Understand, Ember, that in seeking these secrets I abandoned all which is familiar to me. I can no more return to my nest than you can return to yours… for which I am sorry." Quiet anger laced her words, though anger at him or herself or something else entirely he could not tell. "Very sorry."

Eager to lighten the foul mood his question had sparked, Ember folded his hands beneath his head, adjusting his back on the cold floor, and gave a tremendous sigh. "Hummph. So all we have to do is find this treasure, and you'll be happy."

"I will be whole."

"And we don't know what it looks like, where it is, how to obtain it—we know nothing about it, in short."

"Yes…" Ky glanced down at her intertwined hands. "But… you will try?"

He sighed again.

He felt—he wasn't sure how he felt, exactly. Used. Manipulated. But he was too tired to explain that to Ky, and even if he did, it wouldn't change anything now.

"If this treasure is so important to you, and truly belonged to the sirens once…" Ember groaned faintly. "Then I suppose we might as well try to find it. We've come this far, after all."

Her face sagged and her eyes fluttered closed, as if those were the words she had been waiting to hear since the moment she appeared on his doorstep.

"But we have to get out of this mountain, Ky," he warned her. "If we see a path to freedom, we'll take it, without hesitation. We can agree on that, at least."

She did not respond.

He tried to find a reasonably comfortable position on the stone, grimacing as his bones popped and cracked. The noises were loud enough for Ky to flicker an ear at him. Finally he said, "You won't stop me, will you?"

A longsuffering sigh pierced his soul.

"No, Ember," she assured him. "I will not stop you."

And with that, he felt, they had reached a mutual understanding—though he did wonder how long it would last. If Ky was so desperate to get her hands on this treasure—whatever it was—and he was necessary for the getting of it (as he had feared), he doubted she would let him go so easily… even if she thought she would now.

Ember rubbed his hands across his face, overwhelmed.

He was too sleepy to think properly, and his thoughts and fears and suspicions wandered in circles until at last he decided they would all have to wait until morning. Or, rather, after he had rested, for he had no way of knowing what hour it was in the outside world.

Ky hummed, sweeping all of her hair over one shoulder, and for the first time since they had met he saw her yawn: her jaw stretched wide, fangs glinting in the stone-light, blue tongue curled back toward her throat. A sigh and a squeak echoed through the hall, and then her mouth snapped shut and she licked her lips several times.

The display almost managed to drag a smile out of him—and then his stomach growled, and a knot of pain formed in the middle of his body. He pressed a fist into his belly and shut his eyes as tightly as he could.

He heard Ky lie down beside him; all was quiet.

A pebble or drop of water plinked in a distant hall, and a breath of air echoed through the arched ceiling far above them—the sound of emptiness.

His stomach growled again.

"Hungry," he mumbled, by way of an explanation. "Sorry."

After several moments of silence, Ky let out a shallow breath.

"I am always hungry," she whispered.

He found the statement disquieting, and even more so when she continued her soft murmurings as if speaking to herself:

"Always feeding. Forever hungry. Never satisfied."

He lay on the stone in a cold sweat, eyes closed, listening intently. But nothing more was said, and he could not even determine if she had meant for him to hear.