Joseph Lewis - Wren the Fox Witch

“We should probably get up,” she whispered back.

They both sighed and groaned and sat up, and then moved apart to stand up and fix their clothing. Wren felt a last lingering tingle in her veins, down in her legs and back, and it slowly faded as she stood there, looking out over the city.

“What would you like to do next?” she asked.

Tycho laughed. “I don’t know. I suppose we should go tell someone that the war has been indefinitely postponed.”

“Let’s.”

They climbed down the stairs in the watch tower and headed back across the park, and then through the broken palace and through the quiet city streets to the gates of the cistern. Everything after that was a blur of faces and the same conversation, over and over. Tycho would tell someone what had happened, and they would run off to tell someone else. Soldiers spilled up out of the little mausoleum, followed by squinty-eyed clerks and weary servants, and the calm Duchess and the haggard Italian.

Tycho did most of the talking, and Wren was happy to let him answer the questions, over and over. What happened, and when, and who, and on and on it went. She let her thoughts wander off to other things, to images of them both lying on the wall, breathless.

I wonder if we can do that again.

Soon.

As the afternoon became evening, things began to happen more quickly. Soldiers and sailors began patrolling the shores and streets, though they found the city quiet enough. The Duchess moved her army of clerks and papers into the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, where the priests graciously found rooms for most of the staff to sleep and work.

The priests also produced a small feast of roast lamb and red wine for their guests, and Wren found herself sitting in a corner with a warm belly full of food and her brains floating gently in alcohol as she watched Tycho on the far side of the crowded room doing very boring things with men in uniforms and piles of papers. She played with the ring on her finger, wondering what sort of talks she might have in the days to come with the ghosts of the valas, and the ancient witch Yaga. She also played with her bracelets, wondering what else she might one day learn to do with them and the aether they commanded.

“Wren?”

She looked up as Omar sat down across from her with a glass of wine in his hand.

“Hello, old timer.”

He nodded and forced a smile. “I see you’ve been busy saving the world without me.”

She smiled. “I learned from the best.”

“Hm.” He sipped his wine. “You learned from your valas, and I suspect you even learned a thing or two from Yaga in your brief time together. I…” He sighed and sipped his wine.

“Everything all right?”

“No, not really,” he said.

“You didn’t find Nadira?”

He narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, and then looked away. “No, and I doubt I’ll ever see her again.”

She sipped her wine. It tasted awful but she liked the warmth in her belly and the tingle in her fingers. Her gaze wandered over to Tycho again.

He has the most intense eyes.

“Do you want to stay here?”

Wren blinked and looked at Omar. He slouched in his chair, his head resting on his hand as he leaned over the table and stared down into his glass.

“Maybe. For a while,” she said. “I don’t know. Why?”

The Aegyptian shrugged.

“Aren’t we still going to Alexandria?”

“I do need to go back,” Omar said. “Eventually. Things to do. Loose ends to tie up. Mistakes to correct. Sins to atone for.” He drank.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He looked up at her. “Wren, you’re a very impressive young woman and I imagine you will have a very remarkable life, wherever you go or whatever you do. But there’s little need for you to follow me around anymore. You don’t need a teacher. Anything you need, you’ll find in that ring or you’ll figure out for yourself.”

Wren sat very still.

He’s never been like this before. These last few days, something has changed in him. Something very deep, very important.

She cleared her throat. “I won’t ask what exactly happened to you out there. Nadira. Koschei. That’s your past, and your business, and I know it’s probably very complicated and painful, and I’m sorry about that. But I thought we were going to solve all the mysteries of the universe together, and open the gates of paradise, and meet the gods. You’ve been doing this for, well, a very long time, and I wanted to be a part of that. I still do. Don’t you?”

Omar shook his head, his eyes gazing darkly into hers. “Wren, I stumbled into your country and caused a plague that nearly wiped out an entire people, and the best cure I could invent left you all deformed for life.”

She reached up and plucked lightly at one of her tall furry ears. The sensation sent a shiver down her scalp, and she smiled. “But isn’t the point that you saved us?”

“No.” He sipped his wine. “Five hundred years ago in Rus, I made a woman and her son immortal because I thought they were good people, and would make the world a better place. And that mother went mad with grief and raised the dead from their graves, and that son became a bloodthirsty butcher. And now Nadira’s gone, too. And you don’t even want to know about Lilith.”

Wren frowned. “You may have a played a part in all these things, but you’re not responsible for other people. Koschei killed those people, not you. Yaga lost control, not you.”

“But I made them!” Omar squinted up at the stained glass window on the far wall. “I made all of them. If it weren’t for my damned pride, none of this would have happened. Not here, not in Ysland. How many people would be alive today if it weren’t for me?”

“Maybe you did make mistakes, but you didn’t engineer these things. You certainly didn’t want them to happen. Yes, you made some people immortal, to help you. Don’t you see? That was humility, not vanity or pride. You knew you needed help on this search of yours, that you needed other people to uncover new truths and build a better world,” Wren said. “Those are all good things.”

“What better world? What have I actually accomplished? In four and a half thousand years, what have I done?” He shook his head. “Science? I didn’t invent the steam engine, or electricity, or flying machines. The Mazighs did that all on their own. Exploration? The Espani discovered the New World, two entire continents! And they did it with some of the worst sailing ships in the Middle Sea, too.”

Omar rubbed his eyes as his mouth twisted downward and his voice began to break. “Art. Music. History. Engineering. Politics. Philosophy. I haven’t added one bit to even the smallest corner of human achievement, in four millennia of life. I’ve just played with things I didn’t understand, and turned decent people into murderers and self-loathing shadows of themselves. How many people are dead because of me? How much of the world has been dented, broken, stained, and ruined by me?”

Wren played with her glass, swirling the last dregs of her wine around and around. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you. All I know is that I’ve known you for the last year, and I think you’re a decent man with good intentions.”

Omar said nothing.

“You discovered sun-steel. You invented immortality. I’d say that’s something.”

“I invented a new sort of torture,” he whispered. “Seductive, and insidious, and unnatural.”

Wren sighed.

What does he want from me? He’s pouting like a child. Does he want me to forgive him, or tell him what to do? Is this just guilt and regret, or something deeper? How can he possibly feel responsible for what Koschei and Yaga did five hundred years after he left them?