Impossible Creatures

by Katherine Rundell

The air, he thought, smelled different up here: rich and unfamiliar. It smelled like a concentration of growing things, green and earthy—like life distilled.

“I’ll protect you,” he said. “Don’t panic. I won’t let anything happen to you.” The creature bit him lightly on the thumb. This was, some might say, a foolish and dangerous promise to make to any living thing, given the chaotic unpredictability of the world.

We none of us expected this. That is, in general, the nature of adventures. Adventurers tend to smell. The great epic tales stank, I think, more than the historians give them credit for.”

“Berserkers do not weep,” he said. “And they do not love. How could they, when they mustn’t fear? Love has fear baked into it.”

“There are strange days ahead. The most dangerous human talent is forgetting.”

“For instance: consider the greatest riddle of all—what you should do with your one brief life? The answer is different for each person. There is no neat answer, though many have tried to offer one. There are no answers to being alive. There are only strong pieces of advice.”

“For example”—and she looked at Christopher, at Mal—“stop expecting life to get easier. It never does; that is not where its goodness lies. Or”—and she looked at Irian, at Nighthand—“do not wait for people to be faultless before you allow yourself to adore them. Adore them anyway. Such things are worth more than riddles.”

He loathed the Immortal knowledge that had been laid on him. He loathed that he could forget nothing. “At last he reached a point when he could no longer bear it. He looked at the world. He saw its cruelty and its sorrow, its bloodshed. He asked: Is it all, the Archipelago and the world beyond it—is it, the angry thing of the world, worth its own pain? Is humanity worth the pain it inflicts upon itself? His whole body revolted; his whole heart told him, No.

“I think some people—who murder once and find it not unpleasant—find it easier, each time, to do so again,” said Irian. “But for most, the act of murder is born of dire panic, or blinding anger, or sickness, or terror. Not habit.”

“They say if the glimourie isn’t saved now, it never will be saveable. It’s a concept you humans have always struggled to grasp: that time might run out.”

“You, of all people, will refrain from lecturing me,” said Irian. “I want to be clear, Madam Trevasse, that I called because I couldn’t think of anybody else who might have the power to help. Otherwise I would strike you, now, into the ocean.” “And you think that saying this is going to help you, somehow? To charm me?” “No,” said Irian to Anja. “But you’ll either help while knowing you’re loathed, for Nighthand’s sake, or not help at all. I won’t pretend that you’re forgiven. Your kind are excused so much, so often, so easily—a flash of money and all’s well. I won’t play that game. Nighthand wouldn’t want it.”

“That is why great power must never reside in only one person. It must be shared.” Her rough voice was rougher than before. “It must be spread, among as many good women and men as can be found; not because it is kind or polite or fair, but because it is the only way to beat back against horror.”

“You have done well,” she said. “You have done better than you know, which is rare.”

Christopher told them everything. His father was a good listener: he did not interrupt, and he believed what he heard.