Her face jerked. She’d recognized the name.
“He’s using my grandmother’s power to fuel it. She suffers. He knows this and does nothing. To him we’re tools to be used.”
The line of her mouth hardened. I’d hit a nerve.
“Why did you want to die?”
Derision twisted her face.
“Tell me, City Eater. Why did you want to die?”
“Because this wasn’t my world,” she snarled. “There is nothing for me here.”
“It’s not his world either. If he isn’t stopped, he’ll be the last of our line, because I’ll fight to my death to protect the man I love and my future child. He’ll destroy me, and after I’m gone, he’ll murder my baby. Even if he takes the child and lets him grow, sooner or later he’ll kill him, because my father can’t stand to share even an iota of power. Ask yourself why none of your children survived. Why none of his? It’s because he is a creature who eats his young. Our family has no future. He has devoured it.”
Her face was completely flat.
“Sooner or later all of us will end up here, and he won’t stop until he chokes the life out of the rest of the land. He’ll turn this world into a copy of the old one, until it too collapses under his weight, and the cycle will begin anew. Ten thousand years from now, when you’ve been awakened for the third time, and another girl stands in my place asking for your help, will you ask her why?”
I couldn’t tell if any of it sank in.
“Look at it.” I raised my hands, indicating the stone box we stood in. “Just look at it.”
Magic flared. The image of my grandmother vanished and an inferno of pale purple light blazed in her place, bleeding magic. Erra’s translucent form melted into it. I raised my hand to shield my eyes. Magic raged around me, boiling and twisting.
Silence stretched.
“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.