Sorai closed Malina’s fingers around the vial, then turned to me, fixing me with her gaze like a butterfly speared under glass. “And you, little one, an altogether different thing. Your true name is and should be Lisarah, and you’ll use this for your anointing.”
It was such a strange thing to hear yourself spoken, in three such simple syllables. Especially when you didn’t sound like anything you thought you knew. If Malina was a peach I was a scuffed-up walnut, wrapped in a shell of rough but porous strength. I could take hammers and pliers, even be ground underfoot without cracking—but the meat inside was mild and sweet, all desire to protect and yield and please.
My sister’s exact opposite.
My own vial landed gently on my palm and all of me wafted out, top notes of tobacco accord and copper, and beneath it carnation, plum, and cherry blossom. It smelled like the sleek black wing of my hair over one shoulder, my apple cheekbones, the long and sinuous lines of all my limbs.
Abruptly I remembered Mama’s bedtime story of coaxing our gleam, the platter of her offerings, the hibiscus flower and the cherry. Maybe this was where it had come from; maybe this was the gift she’d wanted to give us, in whatever form she could. “Did you do this for Jasmina, too? For Faisali, I mean? The naming and the scenting?”
“Of course, when she was old enough to understand and wear the ribbons that bind us together, that connect us to each other’s blood and link all the way back to Mara. Among many things, there’s honey in each one, harvested on our grounds the day the daughter was born—the birthplace home is as much a part of a witch’s soul and heart as anything else. I’ve done this for Faisali, and your grandmother, Shimora, and your aunt, Anais. For every single one of you, ever since all this began. This is your welcome to our coven, to your true family.”
“And what is all this, really?” I said softly, marveling. “How many of us have there been? And how are we—you—all still alive, and young?”
She took our free hands again, opening another current of shocking warmth between us. “Years and years ago, those with blood like ours were half divine, as near to the gods as to mortals. The source of our magic is a place as much as it is an element—the people of this time might call it another dimension, perhaps, or even a universe, above or below or woven through ours.”
She waved a dismissive hand, as if she had about as much use for these newfangled words as for the people of this time. “What matters is that all the gods, the old and new: they swim in it, are made of it, and never die. Mortals might reach for it and sometimes find the conduits, take little sips of it here and there, make small ripples of magic happen. But we’re born with it already rushing through our veins. We may not live where gods and magic dwell, but we’re born to it all the same.”
I frowned. “So, we’re immortal? We don’t die?”
She held up a hand, and I cut myself off in an instant. “No, child. We’re long-lived and more robust than most, but of course we would die otherwise. Everything natural in this world does. But all those years ago, another great witch snagged upon a woman in our mother Mara’s tribe, a mortal beauty who had won the love of a man this powerful, outlander witch had wanted for herself. The jealous witch grew fat with fury and called upon the old gods to curse the poor woman, such that everyone she loved, including the man, would be dogged by death, given to accident, illness, and injury. And once they were mortally wounded, they wouldn’t die but live on in relentless agony, suspended between this world and the next.”
Just like Mama. Dead and undead all at once. Pain speared through me, hooked like a harpoon.
“Like Mama,” Malina said, echoing my thoughts even as my mind raced ahead. “Does that mean that she—that she can feel the things that happened to her?”
“And what does this woman’s curse have to do with us?” I added.
Sorai shifted her head once, just enough to spill her hair over her other shoulder. Even that small movement, the slick, snaking fall, was staggering to watch.
“The curse was vast and vicious,” she said. “So colossal it killed the witch who wrought it even as it took hold of that wretched mortal woman and her kin. It would dog her and her bloodline, ruin everyone around her that she loved, lay waste to our mother Mara’s tribe. And Mara was her people’s healer, their beating heart. She couldn’t stand by and merely watch. So she worked her own spell, an even larger one—shifting the curse to herself and her own line. It was a tremendous thing, a blazing sacrifice. Something only she could have done.”
I thought of Mara kneeling naked on that icy plateau from the dream, heat rising from her, those ground bones and powders with their patterns in the snow, blood sluicing down her arms. “What was the sacrifice?” I whispered, roiling with dread.
“Twofold, child,” Sorai answered, eyes sliding over to mine. “First, to summon an immaterial force—to give it flesh, make it attend to her—she offered raw material: the burned remnants of my youngest sister, weaned only a few months before. From her ashes, she clothed Death with mortal flesh, made it human enough to reckon with. To bargain with. To be swayed by the temptations of lovely flesh and blood.”
“Her own daughter?” Malina said. “She killed her own daughter for it?”
Sorai’s gray eyes held steady even as her voices dipped into a sibilant hiss. “The power we have isn’t always kind, child. It demands that we do what must be done, for those who can’t do it for themselves. The burden and the gift of the half divine.”
The legend of Mara and the spring god Jarilo she had birthed flicked through my mind; this wasn’t that, but it was something close. Mara had borne something into life, though it wasn’t exactly a son.
“Once Death stood before her, she offered it a trade: if she became its helpmeet, its courtesan and lover, Death would keep the curse at bay. When she wore out—for not even a half-divine woman could walk by Death’s side forever—a daughter of hers from each generation would take up the mantle. And so, from then on, there would always be two. One to carry on our line, the other to become the sacrifice.”
I knew where this was going, could see it, could feel it already. Desperately I scrabbled for anything else to keep the looming truth at bay. “So how are you still alive? Why is everyone young?”