Greg Keyes: Lord of Souls

“Yes,” she said, cutting him off.

“And now…” he began, but did not finish.

She felt a sort of heaviness in her heart.

“Now what?” she said.

“I’ve begun to see that one day I will feel human again. I may never be the same, but I will have something to offer-ah, to someone-if they could be patient with me.”

“Someone?”

He nodded. “You, of course,” he said softly. “I’ve never learned anyone the way I learned you. I’m not sure what I thought love was before. I’m not sure I can define what I think it is now. But I cannot imagine life without you. I want to know you better and better as the years go by. I just need-patience.”

She felt a little smile trying to lift the corners of her mouth, and perhaps it did, a very little.

“I’m not a patient girl by nature,” she said. “I tend to rush into things or fall off of them. But if you can be patient with me, I can be patient with you.”

And so they fell silent again, and let the music of the forest entertain them.

Far away, another man and woman listened to a deeper, stranger music and watched the luminescent films they had named wisperills do their slow, colorful aerial dances, as if welcoming them. The trees hummed and murmured, not as before, but with the strength of the millions that spread out and away in the strange land, whose great boughs supported the island when it could no longer fly and helped settle it deep in boggy ground.

Fhena leaned back against Glim and exhaled deeply. “This is a nice place,” she said. “I like it.”

“So do I,” he said. “What I’ve seen of it.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Only that I don’t know where we are. At first I imagined that we would be returned to Clavicus Vile’s realm, but although I’ve never been there, I don’t think this can be that place.”

“Of course not,” she said. “This is where the trees are from, not Umbriel.”

“But where is it?”

“Home,” she said softly.

“Well,” he said. “Now.”

“Always.”

He smiled, and surrendered for a moment to contentment-after all, it surrounded him. Everyone wasn’t content, of course. Down below, with the lords gone, the chefs and others who considered themselves elevated were doing their best to kill each other. But the skraws and fringe workers were free, and many of them had already left the city to find their livings in the lush world around them.

“What do you think that is?” he asked, pointing to a sort of spire near the horizon.

“I don’t know,” Fhena said. “A rock? An old building? What about it?”

“Tomorrow I think I’ll walk over and find out,” he said.

“Fine,” she replied. “But tomorrow.” And she nestled deeper in his arms, and they watched the wisperills dance.