Page 29 of The Thirteenth Child
“Until my ward had doneeverythingexactly as I asked,” Calamité corrected her, speaking over her until their words echoed.
“But there are so many.”
The gods shrugged, all four of their arms rising and falling in unison.
“Could you contact him?” I asked, trying a different tactic. I knew I was wheedling and sounding every bit of my twelve years, but I couldn’t stop. “Maybe you could pass along a message for me?”
“We could,” Calamité said.
“We’re capable of anything,” Félicité murmured on top of his words.
“But no,” they said together.
“What Merrick wants of you is no business of ours,” Félicitésaid. She glanced to the bright pink sky. “But at least you have better weather now.”
Calamité brightened. “You ought to read outside,” he suggested. “Soak up all this holy starshine while you can.”
Despair washed over me. “Read outside? That’s your suggestion?”
They shrugged again, turning to leave the orchard.
“Wait!” I called out. “My brother—Bertie Lafitte—he’s at your temple in Rouxbouillet. He’s served you for four years now. Do you know him?”
Calamité twisted their head back toward me, allowing only his profile to be seen. “Do you know how many postulants we have? You can’t possibly expect us to keep track of each and every one ofthem.”
“He was taken from my family,” I admitted. “Sold to the temple to pay for my father’s debts. He didn’t exactly go willingly.”
“How many children do your parents plan on sending off to the gods?” Félicité wondered aloud, still unseen.
“I just wanted to know if…do you know if he’s happy?”
The Divided Ones’ body turned all the way around to face me, and after one sickeningly long moment, their head followed suit. “He serves us,” they intoned, suddenly sounding so much larger than just two voices. They were a horde, a legion, every single one of the gods contained within speaking together at once. “How could he be anything but?”
I cowered under the weight of their direct attention. They were so much bigger than they’d been only moments before, as if the additional voices required more body space to contain them. I watched in horror as other eyes opened up across their face and forearms, regarding me with hostile suspicion, intense curiosity, and utter disdain.
Just how many gods were trapped in there?
“Go back to your studies now, mortal,” the gods hissed, rasping my eardrums. There were so many of them speaking. “And thank your stars that reading is all Merrick requires of you.”
With a flash of Félicité’s pink light, they were gone, leaving me alone in the orchard once more.
I took a deep, shaky breath. My fingers were trembling, and for a long moment I stood there, waiting for the Divided Ones to return and shower me with their wrath. I waited for the earth to open up and eat me, waited for the sky to turn ugly and bruised and drown me in a torrent of rain.
But none of those things happened, and eventually I straightened and did the only thing I could think of: I returned to the cottage, opened a new book, and began to read.
Chapter 11
I read for months, markingeach day with a little check in a notebook I kept on my bedside table.
Félicité’s pink starshine never faltered or faded, so when I grew tired of reading in the armchair or hunched over the worktable in the kitchen, I took my books outdoors. I’d spread out my velvet quilt in the center of the orchard and while the day away, studying charts of bones and ligaments, tendons and musculature.
Three months went by, then four, five, six, in a flash and flurry of pages.
I’d expected the Divided Ones to return, hoping they might be interested in my progress. I was eager to show them, to showanyone,how I was coming along. I yearned for a bit of encouragement, a speck of praise. I longed to have someone be aware of the work I was accomplishing.
But my reading list wasn’t enough to tempt the fated gods’ curiosity, and I remained alone.
More months ticked by.
