My first impression upon waking was that I had ended up in Heaven. I was cradled in a cloud. A sweet autumnal breeze wafted gauzy curtains like the gossamer wings of the blessed. Sunlight gilded all it touched; the Golden House was made of sun. Everything made sense now.
This was not my room, not any of my rooms. I raised my head with difficulty, for it was very heavy, and saw Kiggs sitting with his back to me, writing at a desk.
Oh, good—he was dead, too. It wasn’t just me.
“She stirs!” he cried, hearing my suspiration, or the clouds creaking under me. He rushed to my side, flopped onto the golden expanse of nebulous bed beside me, and lay propped up on his elbows. He pushed my hair (a storm cloud) out of my face. He smiled, and his eyes were stars.
“Before you ask: you’ve been out a whole day.” He rested his chin in his hand, pressing at his cheek as if to stop himself from foolishly grinning. He couldn’t stop. He gave it up. “I was worried,” he said. “We all were. There was this giant Saint, and fire, and you were …” He spread his hands as if trying to encompass the unfathomable scale of it. “How did you do all that?”
I shook my head, which was full of suns, flashing and jangling and making it hard to answer. Maybe this wasn’t Heaven, but I was no longer of this world. Or else I was the world. Maybe the distinction was pointless.
I closed my eyes to quiet the intensity around me. The world was no longer on fire, but there was an echo of fire in everything. A memory of fire. It was still too much. I felt everything.
“The war …,” I began in a voice like autumn leaves.
“Peace has broken out,” Kiggs proclaimed. “Glisselda has negotiated terms with all sides. The Regent of Samsam is heading home, tail between his legs; the Loyalists and the Old Ard are still here, patching broken wings and shattered trust, but they’ll soon depart as well. General Zira reports that Comonot muscled through in the Kerama, but we don’t have all the details yet.”
Kiggs leaned in until I could feel his breath in my ear. “When St. Pandowdy picked Jannoula up, I felt it. Like sorrow or release, or like I loved her for just a moment and wanted her to be well. I wanted the world to be well. It was the most extraordinary thing. And then before you collapsed, it came over me again, this burst of … what?”
He was incandescent even with my eyes closed, too bright to look at. I reached out and touched his face. He took my hand and kissed the palm.
I gasped. I was like an open wound; I felt everything tenfold.
“I don’t know what to call any of it,” I said, trying to catch my breath.
He laughed, like sunlight on water. “Jannoula glowed, but then St. Pandowdy—and you—”
“And Abdo,” I said. He would not have known he was seeing Abdo.
Kiggs would insist on asking me to answer the unanswerable. “I want to understand what I saw. I want to know—”
“If I’m a Saint?” I asked.
He said softly, “That wasn’t my question, no, but feel free to answer that.”
I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut. I had been waking slowly into myself again, but that question accelerated the process, made me harshly aware of my physical form. My sleep chemise—who’d dressed me?—was stiff and my scales itchy; I had blisters between my toes; my mouth was unpleasantly dry, and I could really have stood a trip to the garderobe. Every prosaic ache and quirk and failing rushed to my notice at once. I put a hand over my eyes. “Pandowdy may be a Saint, whatever else is true.”
“Agreed,” said Kiggs.
“I saw everything, Kiggs. I held the whole world in my mind at once”—I didn’t hold it now; I could feel it still trickling away—“but don’t … I can’t call myself a Saint.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Maybe that question isn’t for you to answer.”
I rolled onto my side, facing him, still not opening my eyes. “But there was something … extraordinary. I was more than me, and the world was more than the world. How do I reconcile myself with that, Kiggs?” I asked, my voice cracking under the weight of new distress.
“With what, love?” he asked.
I took his face in my hands; it was terribly urgent that he understand. “How am I to fit back into myself after this?”
He laughed softly. “Haven’t you always been more than yourself? Haven’t we all? We are none of us just one thing.”
He was right, of course. I opened my eyes at last and examined the beautiful surface of him. His teeth were slightly crooked; that was the only difference between them and diamonds.
His face was too smooth. “You disappeared your beard,” I muttered.
His brows arched in surprise. “So you did like it. Glisselda didn’t see how that was possible.”
“Glisselda!” I said, pulling my hands away from his face. “How is she?”
He nodded, firmly affirmative. “She’s Queen,” he said wryly, “and then some. Like none we have ever witnessed before.” He smiled. “She and I have talked, and confessed our hearts’ transgressions, and I believe we understand each other. What’s left to say should perhaps be said with you present, as it pertains to you also.”
My head lolled toward him, then sank deep into a pillow. He lay his head beside mine and brushed my cheek with a finger. I rippled like the ocean.
“All will be well,” he said.
He was right; I had seen it. All was well—or could be, if we worked to make it so. We were the fingers of the world, putting itself to rights.
I had no chance to explain this because he kissed me.
Who can say how long that lasted? I had learned to step outside of time.