She showed the spirits the image of the untamed lands again, and she felt their resistance. They didn’t want that. Now that they’d seen Aratay, they wanted to stay in a land that had already been shaped and solidified. She pressed the image harder into them. Home.
Not home, they replied, and they threw images back at her: the towering mountains of Semo, the wide fields of what she thought was Chell, the glaciers of Elhim, the seas around Belene. We want our own home.
You’ll have one, in the untamed lands, she told them. You can be happy there. No queen. No orders. No commands. Once I find my children, I’ll abdicate and leave, and you can live your lives without any of the humans you hate so much.
Unfinished. She felt the word as a feeling more than a word. The others echoed it around her, and she felt their sadness.
Unfinished. Undone. Interrupted. Humans . . . Cannot return to the untamed lands. Cannot be without a queen. Don’t want to. Don’t leave us. Can’t. Can’t. Don’t make us. Unmake. Undone.
And then a soft, quiet: Please.
She followed the thought into the mass of spirits. It was from a little air spirit with a thin humanlike body and delicate wings. Feeling the touch of Naelin’s mind, it flew closer and alit on the deer’s head. It held on, wrapping its long fingers around a feather.
Why? Naelin asked. Aloud, she said, “You hate queens. In the untamed lands, you’ll be free. No humans. No queens.”
The little spirit shuddered. “Stupid human, you don’t understand.” Her voice was as shrill as a whistle in the wind. “Beyond the borders of Renthia lies the chaos of the world beginning, unfinished. Do not send us back to the beginning.”
“But you can’t stay here,” Naelin said. “You need your own home.”
“Not home,” the spirit said. “Never became home. Long, long ago, it began.”
All around, the other spirits echoed her: Long, long ago.
Long ago, longer ago, still longer ago, back, beginning, before beginning. Yes, before the beginning . . . “Before the beginning, we were called by the Great Mother of Spirits to shape this world, seed this world, breathe this world to life.”
We came. We shaped. We breathed.
We did not finish.
“We did not finish. We should have shaped this world to perfection, given it form, given it life, given it all, but before we were done, your kind came.”
Humans.
Scourge.
Born too soon.
“You were not to be here yet. We were not ready.”
Not time.
Not your time.
Not our time.
“The world wasn’t finished, but you were here, and we did not know what to do. We were afraid. We were angry.”
We hated you.
Hate.
Still hate.
It was not your time.
You were not to be born yet. Not yet. We were not done. We were not gone.
“We found you,” the little spirit said. “And we killed . . .”
You killed.
We killed.
All of us killed.
“And the Great Mother tried to stop our fight. But she died in the battle. She was not supposed to die. But she did, and the world was unfinished, and we were still here and you were here, and this was never supposed to be. We were supposed to finish and change, become the world’s protectors, but we did not, this was not to be, because you came. And you were not enough. You are not enough. But you are something. With you, we make something out of nothing. But it is your fault there is not more, your fault so much is undone, and we will never forgive you.”
Naelin tried to make sense of the story. She never knew the spirits had their own story of how it all began, of where their hatred came from. She only knew the spirits needed queens and yet hated them. “You were supposed to make the world . . . and then leave?”
“Not leave,” the little spirit said. “Change. We would have become what we were meant to be. But we lost our fate. It died that day, with Her.” And the sadness rose in waves from the little spirit and permeated the others. It swamped them, and they did not speak again as they kept flying westward as the sun trekked above them.
At nightfall, Naelin found another barren circle and fought them again as they tried to bond with it, harder this time.
“What’s going on?” Ven asked her quietly.
“They don’t want to go back,” Naelin said.
“Can’t blame them,” Ven said.
“But they’re spirits. They hate us. I thought . . .” She’d thought the spirits in the untamed lands were free, the way they wanted to be, but she’d been wrong. “They told me their creation story. It’s different from any I’ve heard.” She told him what the spirits had told her.
When she finished, Ven said, “Wish my sister were here to hear that.”
“They think it’s true.” She’d never felt sorry for spirits before, but when she’d told them about the untamed lands and about her plan to leave them there, she’d felt their fear. Like children, afraid of being abandoned by their parents.
They’d lost their Great Mother.
The queens, they’d said, were poor substitutes.
But we’re all they have.
Reaching out, she sent them a thought: I won’t abandon you there.
The spirits paused. As if all of them were holding their breath at once, she felt them listening to her. Is that what you’re afraid of? Being without a queen in the untamed lands?
Yes. Yes, it was.
I’m going with you. She pushed them the memory of Erian and Llor. I need to find them. Help me, and I won’t leave you alone. We’ll go into the untamed lands together, and I promise I won’t leave you behind. We’ll come back, and we’ll find you a true home.
A ripple went through the spirits. It was a mixture of fear and something Naelin had never felt in them before.
Hope.
The spirits agreed.
Braced between two pillars, Daleina stood at the top of the Queen’s Tower and tried to ignore Hamon and his mother bickering behind her.
“If she really wants to talk to me, she shouldn’t make me climb so many stairs,” Garnah was griping. “Also, she should provide a lounge chair at least. I don’t sit on floors.”
“This is the most secure place in Mittriel,” Hamon said.
“Pfft. Not so secure. Chop a few support branches, and we’ll all plummet to our deaths on the forest floor. Boom! Splat!” Garnah made a variety of squishing noises.
“Secure from spies, Mother.”
Daleina heard shuffling and the crinkling of fabric behind her, then a theatrical sigh before Garnah said, “Most likely, we’d be impaled on one of the lower towers long before we hit the forest floor.”
“Mother. Enough. Daleina didn’t call you here to murder you.”
“Delightful news,” Garnah drawled. “But I’d prefer to hear such assurances from Her Majesty.”
That was her cue to turn around and reassure Garnah, but instead Daleina sank her mind into the forest, reaching out to the spirits, soothing them. Safe. You’re safe. They won’t hurt you. Don’t hurt them. They’ll be gone soon. She felt the spirits twist and squirm—they wanted to hide or attack or chase or flee. Calm. You’re safe.
She couldn’t keep her spirits from following the swath of foreign spirits that clung to Queen Naelin. They hovered around their camp, watching the intruders’ every move. Ripples of unease spread across Aratay, from spirit to spirit. She couldn’t stop it, or even slow it. All she could do was try to keep it from building into anything more.
Do no harm.
Leave them be.
Watch, if you must. But just watch.
She couldn’t reach far enough to see through their eyes at such a distance, the way that Queen Naelin could, but she could sense them congregating in a squirming, squalling mass outside of the village of Redleaf. Naelin had made it that far at least. Another night, and she and all her spirits should be across the border into the untamed lands.