“Good speech,” Erra said from somewhere within the inferno.
“It’s not—”
“What else do you have?”
What else? I grappled with the question, trying to think of something—anything—to convince her.
“He’s rebuilding the Water Gardens.”
“What about it?”
“He told me you used to love them. You used to play there together. That you had a happy childhood.”
“And?”
“Take my memories. I know you can do it, because my grandmother has done it. Look into my head. See the childhood my father has given me.”
The light splayed out and licked me, seizing me into a tight, hard fist. Pain seared my mind, pulling me apart, as if my soul were fabric and it was unraveling thread by thread. I let it hurt me and melted into it, giving up everything, all my memories, all my fears, and all of my dreams.
? ? ?
THE SUN WAS warm on my face. Such a hot welcoming sun. A shallow pond lay before me, only ankle deep, a jewel cradled in the green hands of proud cypresses. Small fishes darted through the clear water, golden and white sparks against the turquoise bottom. In the middle of it a pavilion of pink stone rose with a domed roof, no walls, only four arches. A delicate mosaic of colored tiles lined the ceiling, showing the sun, the planets, and the stars, as if a Persian carpet of incredible beauty had been stretched across it. A dark-haired woman sat on the steps of the pavilion, her feet in the water, her blood-red dress floating on the surface of the pond. She beckoned.
I stepped into the pond and walked to her. The turquoise stones felt smooth under my feet. My white dress floated, swirling in the water.
The woman patted a step next to her. She was so beautiful, my aunt.
I sat. She reached for my hair. It was long again, the way I liked to have it. She ran her hands through the brown strands, pulled out a tortoiseshell comb, and gently brushed it.
I saw our reflection in the water. The girl in the white dress had my face but she seemed so young and pretty. Soft, like she had never opened another human being with her blade and let their blood flow on the sands of the pits. Someone had brushed gold on my eyelids. Someone had lined my eyes with black. Someone had put a delicate gold chain around my neck with a red stone full of fire.
Was it really me?
My aunt put a white flower into my hair. “This is what you were meant to be,” she said. “The princess of Shinar. Not a mongrel without family. Not some man’s attack dog. Not the mindless weapon I saw in your memories. You didn’t know about it, your father kept it from you, but it is yours.
“Is this what it looked like? The Water Gardens?”
“Yes.”
I could stay here forever. It was so peaceful here.
“This was my favorite place. I wanted to bring my daughters here the way my mother brought me,” my aunt said, her dark eyes soft like velvet. “The war destroyed everything you see and I never had any daughters. He rebuilt the gardens, but they weren’t the same. It was never the same. All gone now. The splendor of Shinar is dust. We are all that remains.”
“I don’t want it to disappear.”
“It must,” she said. “It lives only in my heart. Now it will live in yours.”
I turned to look at her. The pavilion was gone. I sat in a room. Gauzy red curtains blocked my view, and in the gap beyond them I saw a trellised balcony. A sticky dark puddle slowly spread on the floor, inching toward my feet. I had seen too many puddles exactly like this. The smell hit me, hot and metallic. An awful crunching sound came from somewhere beyond the veils of red gauze.
“What is this?”
“You wanted to share,” my aunt said. “You showed me yours. I’ll show you mine.”
I drew the curtain aside. The sound got louder, a sickening, chewing, slurping sound.
I pulled the last curtain aside. A bed strewn with a child’s toys and colorful pillows. A thing glared at me from the floor. Hairless, gray, awful, with huge owl eyes and bloodstained teeth. It clutched a child’s headless corpse in its front limbs. It stared at me and chewed.
“This is the way your uncle died,” my aunt said. “Also two of your aunts.”
I lunged forward. The thing shrieked, dragging the child’s body with it. I chased it. I had to kill it.
“They came from the sea,” Erra said. “You won’t find their names chiseled into any stone. We obliterated them and their memory. We erased them from existence. They had attacked the kingdoms like a plague, bringing their magic and their creations like that thing you’re trying too hard to kill.”
If only I could catch it, I would crack its skull like a walnut.
“We were betrayed by our neighbors. We had left to broker an alliance. When we returned, the palace of Shinar was silent. We found only half-eaten corpses.”
The thing darted toward my aunt. She looked at it and its bones broke, the big dome of its skull caving in on itself as if stomped.
“Look outside,” she said.
I stepped onto the balcony. A vast plain unrolled before me. An army charged at me. Shaggy, huge armored mammoths; strange beasts, their hindquarters striped, their heads too large for their bodies, their jaws filled with oversized hyena teeth; creatures for which I had no name; and people in armor. I glanced behind me. The dark room was gone. My aunt strode onto the field in front of her troops. She wore blood armor. Her loose hair streamed in the wind. Behind her the emerald standards snapped, pulled taut. She began to run, at first slowly, then picking up speed. The troops behind her broke into a charge. To the right, a man in blood armor on a white horse raised a spear and shouted. His horse reared and I saw his face, impossibly handsome and alight with magic. Father . . .
My aunt charged across the field, magic twisting around her.
The first line of the enemy was almost to her.
Erra opened her mouth. Power tore from her, an unstoppable blast that sent the armored mammoths flying.
At the other end of the field, my father raised his hands. The earth split, swallowing the enemy.
The two armies collided. A sword landed next to me. I grabbed it.
“This is also you,” Erra said next to me. “This is the wrath of Shinar. They who thought they would murder us, take our cities, and eat our children, they met our anger and it consumed them. It consumed us too, but not before we obliterated their very memory from history. We wiped them off the face of the planet. It is as if they never were.”
Around me the battle raged. My father spun in the center of a magical maelstrom. Behind him the earth shuddered and broke loose. A creature of metal and magic, a beautiful golden lion a hundred feet high, burst onto the field. My aunt twisted and sliced the head off an invader. It went flying.
“This is what you are asking me to betray,” Erra said into my ear.
I closed my eyes and imagined the weight and warmth of a child in my arms. When I opened them, my son looked back at me with Curran’s gray eyes. The battle was gone. We sat in the pavilion again.
I held my son out to Erra. “This is what I’m asking you to save.”