Sky Stitcher, page 5
I knew it would not work, but with my temper rising, I lowered the Eldress from my back. The least I could do was humor her…maybe then she would understand this was all a mistake. Maybe then she would help me find a way to undo this.
But at the slightest nudge from the heart of stars, cords of light radiated from my fingertips, beaming upward to the opening between realms. Surprise registered somewhere within me, but I fought to calm my racing pulse.
Stitch, I asked the tendrils of magic. My command was tentative…uncertain. Would the skies really listen to me, as Ahma had said? I waved my hand, ignoring the beads of sweat gathering on my brow and the vibrating sense of power that stole the breath from my lungs. The threads refused to sway to my commands. Finally, I ripped my hand from the sky, releasing myself from the strain of my effort.
“It’s not working,” I heaved in frustration.
The rift crackled with lightning and gaped wider as my magic receded. Molten gold lined the black space like the mouth of a monster flashing its wicked teeth, waiting to devour us whole.
Two Daughters caught in a web. Prisha will have her revenge when both are dead. A chill ran up my spine as I watched the gap stretch, Prisha’s curse reaching toward the land in inky black shadows. Crawlers. My nerves ignited, banishing the sluggish fatigue from my limbs as my body buzzed with power. The dark, fingerlike shadow pummeled toward the ground, trailing against the jewel-toned sky like a stain.
Venom and hell. How can I learn to mend the skies if Prisha is summoned by every failure?
The creature spread into a flat puddle on the ground, creating a pool of darkness so complete it siphoned the vibrance of its surroundings, draining the world of its beauty.
I stepped between the creature and Ahma, drawing my dagger from its sheath at my ribs and widening my stance. The ridged back of the crawler rose up from the puddle first, hunched and so bony that its vertebrae flared into spikes like the horned beetles of the desert. The spindly limbs emerged next, followed by its head, hanging low toward the ground with milky white eyes locked on its prey.
It crawled, creeping across the dunes—slowly at first to gain its footing, then bounding forward without warning. It crossed the distance too quickly, leaping into the air with gnashing teeth and claws outstretched. The force of its collision knocked the wind from my lungs, and we tumbled through the sand. I braced my forearm against its neck, holding the creature’s rabid jaws only inches away from my face, struggling against its unrelenting strength. I groaned with effort and shoved the dagger into its temple. Its skull did not resist my blade like normal bone, but succumbed easily with a shower of curdled black blood, letting the blade sink straight to the hilt. The crawler’s shriek left behind a dull ringing in my ears and a silence that carried a palpable weight.
A soft shuffling of sand broke the quiet tension. Breathing shallowly, I turned and saw the Stitcher hobbling toward me, so ancient and diminished she looked like a creature of the In Between herself. She hinged forward at the hips and laid a fragile hand of bone and wrinkles on my shoulder, a gesture that felt like condescension wrapped in pity. There, there, I imagined her saying, though no words left her puckered mouth. She merely searched my eyes in overbearing silence, and the urge to squirm away from her piercing gaze overwhelmed me. But somehow, I remained rigid, still as a statue. Too afraid, or perhaps incapable of recoiling.
“Hmm,” she murmured finally, breaking her deep contemplation. Only the tension in her jaw showed the slightest hint of her inner thoughts. I sat up straighter, still struggling to master my breath. Had she heard Prisha too? Did she know the goddess had taken notice?
“That will not do. We must teach you to do better before I expire. Why are you afraid?” She knelt at my side, her emerald and gold skirt collecting into a pool of ripples around her knees. She reached past my bent legs and extended her hand to brush the limp form of the crawler. With a burdened sigh, she closed her eyes and drew the traces of Halah’s power toward her, pulling the threads of magic from the air until they glimmered about her, encapsulating her in a golden aura.
A bolt of lightning cracked at her fingertips, and the crawler’s body jerked with the sudden influx of power. It withered away, crumbling to dust, scattering on winds that did not belong to the desert. The slithering form of a snake emerged from its ashes, its lithe body twisting in the sand to flee. The Eldress stood with unhurried grace and brushed the golden dust of the desert from her skirt, considering the creature as it disappeared into the shadowy dunes. But it was not fast enough.
Inspiration glimmered in the whites of her eyes, and a great inhalation expanded her lungs. Ahma’s whole body swelled, growing taller and more menacing. At her full height, her shadow elongated behind her, stretching out like an ominous portent to reveal a glimmer of the power she wielded. The Eldress was not a weak, dying creature; she was a force of nature…a Daughter of the goddess. At least when she mustered the last reserves of her power. How had I ever misconstrued that?
The threads of Halah’s magic shot from her fingers and struck her target, her precision enviable by even the most skilled archer. Molten gold flowed through the snake’s body, electrifying it from within until only a charred and petrified form remained. Breathing heavily, Ahma crossed the dunes with an agility I never thought her capable of, as though the brief brush with her purpose had re-empowered her.
She snapped her hand over the deceased snake, and the skies swirled, seemingly aware of the threat below. Prisha’s anger crackled overhead, but the Eldress looked skyward, cast a glare that would bring any self-preserving god to their knees, and hurled the petrified snake toward the heavens. With her head tilted backward, a glint of taunting in her eyes, she stretched her arms out wide. The skies listened to her call.
The glimmering threads rippled at her command, gossamer floss weaving through the rift in a mesmerizing dance, a duet of stars and wonder. The darkness shrank away, yielding to the glowing edges of the rift until the line of gold sparked in the sky and dissipated. A smooth blue plain remained where the gash had been, completely healed of damage. Ahma turned back to me, the crooked smile on her face an echo of who she’d once been.
“Two dune beetles beneath one boot, you see?” She lifted her wiry brows to appraise her own efforts. “Stitched Prisha’s creature right into the sky…may the stars swallow it whole so it will be banished from this realm forever.” Her wide, toothy grin did little to ease my eyebrows back into place. They’d wandered straight to my hairline and gotten irrevocably stuck there. Ahma rolled her eyes, then made a strange gurgling sound, halfway between a sigh and a grumble. “Do not be so afraid of your power, young Stitcher. The skies will listen, but you must mean it. You must own your responsibilities…face them with courage.”
“Ahma, you’re…alarming,” I whispered, half under my breath. Venom and hell, Zara. Why did you say that out loud? To the Eldress?
But the Eldress chuckled in her chirruping melody. “And what did you expect? I told you—Halah does not choose wrong. She does not choose the weak. She chose me, and now she’s chosen you. You must save us when I am gone. You are our future.” She lifted my chin in her hand, staring into my eyes with the milky streams of stars in hers. “Does it make sense to you now? Why she chose you?”
Her words were meant to assure me, but they had the opposite effect. “I don’t want it. I never intended to become ancient and saggy like you, Ahma.” Again, with the truth. Shut your mouth, Zara. She doesn’t need to know you assumed you’d die fighting in this war while one of your Sisters carried on to stitch the skies.
She frowned, her jowls framing the deep creases along her lip lines, but her eyes still twinkled in contrast. “I’ll remember that when I’m gone.”
I couldn’t tell if she was angry or amused, so I pulled my gaze quickly from her and focused on the sky. The stars emerged across the navy veil, golden orbs shimmering through the dark rifts while blackness oozed from the In Between, somewhat tarnishing the glow of their spirits. But when I swept my eyes across the heavens, the stars blinked in greeting. They flared to life despite the curse that slipped between them, the darkness that fought so hard to choke away the resplendence that made them shine. How was I to command something so inconceivably…eternal? I was no Stitcher. This was madness.
The Eldress heaved a weary sigh. “Take us home. We will try again at dayburst.”
With a sense of resolute failure overturning the acrid resentment in my gut, brewing some sort of clumpy, sickening stew, I scooped the Eldress into my arms and helped her onto my back. I dared not voice it, but I’d made up my mind. Tomorrow, I’d flee to the city. Perhaps I could encourage the clan to come, too.
If I were the only hope in standing up against Prisha’s curse, the only recourse against the deadly monsters and growing rifts, none of us were—how did Ahma put it? Long for this world. We needed time…more time than Ahma’s stitches had bought us. And we needed help. We needed Halah to come to her senses and pick someone better suited for these responsibilities.
“Hurry, Zara. I am slipping.”
The Eldress’s bony hands clasped one another in front of my neck, and her knees pressed sharply into my hips. I knew she did not mean she was losing her grip on my back…stitching the gash in the sky had weakened her. “Get us back to the Daughters. I need their strength.”
“Their strength?” I asked, hurrying back along the path we had come.
“The weaving—the Daughters all play a part in a Stitcher’s magic—you and I are…simply conduits of…their…collective…effort.”
Her words slowed and slurred as sleep greedily reached for her, and her hold loosened.
A lattice of golden mesh sparked above us, dissolving like a fraying ribbon consumed by a lick of flames. “Ahma,” I prompted tentatively. She did not answer.
The ground began to tremble and I froze, analyzing the pattern of thumps and swishes filling the empty air, recognizing its source with a shiver of nerves along my neck. A cluster of hooded figures emerged from the dunes, pausing at the precipice of a golden hill to glare down at us.
Heart pounding somewhere in my throat and ears rather than its rightful place between my ribs, I turned and fled. Shouts erupted behind me, and the galloping sound of hooves thumping against sand pursued us. I gripped Ahma’s legs closer, pushing through the slipping sands but struggling to gain the traction to run.
What was I doing? I could not outrun horses. “Ahma! Wake up! Please!”
Ahma screeched, and I nearly fell to my knees. Something sharp brushed against my shoulder blade as she slumped forward, and a warm, sticky substance spread across my back. Her withering groan set my pulse into a frenzy. “Ahma?” I tried, struggling beneath the extra weight of her fading consciousness.
“Put me down, child,” she managed, her voice a raspy wisp of steam spilling from a boiling kettle.
I gripped her tighter and spun around, casting my gaze in a wide circle. Dark figures surrounded us from every angle, closing in with weapons as sharp and menacing as the features on their faces. The Dune Riders. Hunters of the Daughters.
Run, Zara. But I turned wildly, my heart threatening to breach the confines of my ribs as I realized there were no weaknesses in their formation. They’d trapped us.
Chapter 6
The Dune Riders
The Stitcher’s arms grew slack and unresponsive, and her body slid down my back. I crouched to the ground to set her upon the sands, allowing my hands the freedom to move to the set of daggers sheathed at my ribs. If I could not run, I would fight. I had to protect Ahma—if only because I was not ready to take her place.
A tough lump lodged itself in my throat. An arrow jutted out from her shoulder, making her look even more feeble and broken. I turned my gaze toward the Riders, my jaw locked with fury, my teeth grinding together until they ached.
Another arrow landed at my foot. Not an accident or poor aim. A warning. The cocky grin on the Rider’s face made that abundantly clear. “What do you think you’re doing, little Daughter? Running away with the Stitcher? Thought you could save her?” he asked, his words floating with the lightness of laughter at my expense.
As if he had all the time in the world, all the confidence on his side, he stretched his arms out wide and rotated cavalierly, scanning the dunes. “That was an impressive bit of magic. We knew the Stitcher concealed herself with the stars, but we have never witnessed it in action.” He glanced toward the Eldress’s limp form. “Or…inaction.”
He gestured toward the fraying threads of gold arcing in a dome above us—the last remnants of her concealment vanishing with a pop.
“But where are the rest of the Daughters? Have you abandoned them?” His chin lowered as his eyes found me again, and his tone darkened. “Or are you hiding them?”
I didn’t realize how shallow my breathing had become, but my lungs suddenly begged for air, roaring with the pain of my neglect. Had they been the ones who’d taken Lurah? A quick scan of their ranks sent a weight of lead plopping into my stomach, bruising my insides—I didn’t see her among them. But they could have her tucked away somewhere. If they did, I’d need to find her. I couldn’t let them keep her. They could force Lurah to lead them to the guryas or—I did not want to think about the other possibilities.
I needed to get back to my Sisters to warn them—or handle the Riders myself. I couldn’t let them find our camp.
A realization struck me, and panic rushed through my veins. My eyes flickered down to the sands for half a heartbeat, just long enough to confirm my fear. No. I righted my gaze hastily and glared at the haughty Rider, but he hadn’t missed the cue…the subtle body language and my haste to correct it.
A sneer spread across his face, too stretched and thin to match the rest of his features. “You’ve left a trail for us. How thoughtful.” His eyes darted to his neighbor, then he jerked his head in the direction of my footprints in the dunes, the trail of displaced sand that would lead them straight to my Sisters.
The Rider responded with a curt nod, then raised his chin with a triumphant whistle. A dozen broke rank and moved to his side. Dangerous smirks darkened their expressions with the promise of destruction, and they set off into the dunes. Panic clutched my breast as they stirred up the path behind them, erasing the trail of footsteps that connected me with home. A home they’d ensure I’d never be able to return to.
This game had to end now.
I whirled on the man towering before me, ignoring the other Riders who remained behind, their horses chuffing as they tightened their formation around us. Ahma groaned like a slaughtered goat on the ground, her blood black against her shoulder. How much longer would she last without a healer? How much blood had she lost?
“I never thought I’d see the day,” the Rider began, taking a step closer to the Eldress. I shifted, crouching closer to Ahma, and prepared to unsheathe the dagger at my side. You will not touch her, I vowed, still clenching my teeth to the verge of cracking them.
He stopped and stared down his arched nose, his dark brows casting deep shadows across his features to emphasize his surly facade. His lips turned downward in a sneer. “So this is the ‘great’ Stitcher? I see no greatness…just a curse. A plague upon our land. Stand aside, Daughter. The monster needs to die.”
A knife flashed in his hand, and he swooped down, about to plunge the blade into her heart. I lurched forward and stopped the blow with my forearm, sweeping my dagger up to the unprotected space beneath his arm. He easily deflected and shoved me to the ground, pinning me with a force that made my head snap backward into a spray of sand. My ribs groaned beneath the entirety of his weight, and I could feel the air slipping from my lungs.
Do something, Zara. Now.
The cool point of his blade touched the base of my jaw. “You’re a pretty thing, but not pretty enough to keep alive. Another monster that deserves to die, just like the rest of your clan.”
“The only monster here is you,” I seethed, fighting against him, though my heart skittered at an uncomfortable pace beneath his elbow. He clicked his tongue.
I roared to gather my strength, and a subtle light surged within me. Tendrils of energy tickled my hands, weaving through the gaps of my fingers as if to remind me of their presence. I seized them. When my palms closed around the threads, their energy hummed with life, erupting into a vibrant spray of light that knocked the man onto his ass. Sucking in the dry air to refill the desert of my lungs, I moved toward him slowly, enjoying the trace of fear that flickered in his eyes now that he no longer restrained me.
I only vaguely registered the onslaught of arrows soaring through the air, but my eyes homed in on the man before me—the one who thought himself capable of bringing down an entire clan of Daughters. An entire history of protectors. Descendants of the goddess Halah. His mouth hung open, and the whites of his eyes grew, darting nervously from side to side as he watched the threads of light swarm about me, shielding me. The ribbons wrapped around the shafts of the flying arrows, squeezing them and snapping them in midair. They drifted to the ground in a harmless circle. The splintered wood cracked beneath my footsteps, and the Rider’s breath hitched in his throat.
I didn’t have the strength to best the Rider in hand-to-hand combat, and I didn’t have the experience and wisdom of the Eldress. I didn’t have the power of the Daughters to aid me…but I did have me. Zara the disaster. Master of chaos and broken magic. I lowered my voice and leaned toward him. “If you want monsters, I’ll show you a monster.”
Power and fury merged within me, and light exploded from my chest in a vibrant aura. I didn’t know how to stitch, but I knew how to make chaos. I’d ripped the heart of stars from the sky, and I’d unwoven centuries of stitches. I could be their monster. Help me show them a real monster, I willed. Help me end them.
