The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)

by Rachel Gillig

To the child in each of us, yearning to be special. Take my hand, you strange little creature, and together we shall walk beyond the wall.

Coin. The only portent, the only prosperity—the only god of men—is coin.

The abbess strips you of name, face, clothes, distinction… Careful, Number Six. Someone will accuse you of having too much fun up here on this god-awful hill.

You know of the Omens and signs and how to look down your nose at everyone, but nothing of what really goes on in the hamlets.

“I wouldn’t worry over it. Knights are shooting stars, Six. They come and go. But you and me, our sisterhood of Diviners—we’re the moon.” She smiled. “We’re eternal.”

Why didn’t the Omens speak to me like this? In a melody or a spin or the heartbeat of a drum? Not in the spring, in dreams, where I was in pain and afraid, but like this, loose and infinite, when my soul was split open and thrown skyward in delight.

“I have a remarkable talent for violence.”

Relax. Sure. Maybe in my next life.

The gargoyle nodded. “It is all the same, then. Contentedness. Truth and honesty and virtue. Omens. They are all stories, and we”—he gestured to the Seacht’s climbing walls—“tread the pages within them.”

“Fear not, Bartholomew! Every day has its dog.”

“The cathedral, its Omens, its Diviners sit on high,” the gargoyle said plainly. “If you only ever look up at something, can you ever see it clearly?”

“‘Faith requires a display. The greater the spectacle, the greater the illusion.’”

“It’s not true, you know,” he said. “You don’t have to be good, or useful, for someone to care about you.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why help him, I mean?” “Same reason you want to help your Diviners,” Maude said. “Because you care, and because you’re able to do something about it.”

“I could never get comfortable. Never feel what you’re meant to feel. You know—losing oneself with someone else. The unraveling.” My face was so warm it hurt. “The little death.”

This is me

I thought he’d laugh at me. Or be incredulous, like he’d been when I told him I didn’t have shoes. And that was my own fault, thinking I’d charted him—that I could predict his derision or humor or humanity. He opened another door to himself every time.

I pulled my blankets over my ears and faced the wall, thinking on dying and killing and living, and how I was unsuited for all three.

lol 😆

Loneliness touched everything. And the aching beauty of the peaks, the pools, the incomparable night sky, made it so much worse.

Damn

I was losing my faith in everything. But the two of us meeting… it felt almost divine.

Errant knight Rodrick Myndacious, prideful, disdainful, godless, believed in me.

“Your hair is pretty,” Rory murmured. “Like moonlight. And your skin is so soft. But beneath…” He kneaded my muscle. “If I were to bite down, I’d break my teeth on you.” “If you were to bite down,” I said to the sky, “your bottom teeth would leave a crooked mark, unique as your fingerprint.”

And it startled me, that the loneliness I’d felt earlier was no longer so oppressive, as if put to sleep. The night was half-gone, and though I needed rest, I could not bring myself to mind that I was awake and out of bed. Everything was just so… Beautiful.

I dreamed of a knight with gold in his ears and charcoal around his eyes, who did all the ignoble things I asked of him.

“Where is the Diviner, who thinks me nothing without her? Where is the Diviner, come to defeat me at my craft?” Then louder, as if echoing in the walls of my head. “Where is the Diviner, come to me for answers?”

Mother, I’d once thought her, back when I’d spent all my strength trying to please her. But she was not a mother. She was an insect, weaving false stories, feeding upon my pain—working Aisling’s machine for her own glory, her own power, her own timelessness. No. She was not a mother. She was the sixth Omen. The moth. And for what she’d done to me, to the other Diviners, to Traum itself— I’d take the tools she’d given me. Then, with hammer, with chisel… I’d annihilate her.

Sadness, like birch bark, had all the appearance of frailty. And yet… The tree prevailed.

My armor may dent, my sword may break, but I will never diminish.

It is easier, swearing ourselves to someone else’s cause than to sit with who we are without one.”

“I think I would like to stop promising myself away, or else there will be nothing left of me to give, King Castor.”

My body had always been strong—and ever just enough. But whatever my soul was made of was frail. Like birch bark, like gossamer, like the wings of a moth.

He said it intently. Like he was imploring every part of me to take heed. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Sybil Delling.”

“Don’t tell me what they look like.” I pressed onto my toes. Swallowed his shaking breath with my own. “Don’t say anything at all.” Rory’s smeared his thumb across my lips. “I’ll do anything you ask of me.” And then his mouth was on mine.

I must be the stupidest woman alive, that I’d spent so much time fighting with him when I could have been fighting with his lips instead.

“You could walk over me, Sybil Delling. Throw me down until I am dust. I don’t know what to call it, but I want it. I want you.”

I forgot looming tors and scholarly cities. Jagged mountains, outlandish woods, and everyone within them. All I really knew was fullness, painful pleasure—the look in Rory’s eyes as he moved in me. The tender insistence of his fingers between us, circling, stroking—

Maybe contentedness isn’t just a story.

We lost our gods, our armor, our own names. We spent ourselves on each another, completely and utterly vanishing into the craft of desire. Completely, utterly— Gone.

People who love you for your usefulness don’t love you at all.”

We grow up, searching our guardians for what is right and what is true, thinking they have all the answers, like they already understand the signs of life. But they don’t. No one does.”

“It’s hard to see who I am when I am lost in what’s expected of me.”

“When you do the right thing for the wrong reason, no one praises you. When you do the wrong thing for the right reason, everyone does, even though what is right and wrong depends entirely on the story you’re living in. And no one says they need recognition or praise or love, but we all hunger for it. We all want to be special.”

I wanted to throw him down so hard the earth cracked. I wanted to break something for needing him so badly. I wanted him to break me, too—for him to sink his teeth into my neck or breasts or thighs. After so long thinking there was sacrality in drowning, I worried nothing was divine unless it arrived on the beckoning hand of pain.

Not everything had to hurt to be holy. Bad, to be good. But damn me if I wanted it to sometimes.

“I am a battlefield of admiration.” He nodded at the horizon. “I cannot decide which I like best. The sunrise, or the sunset. They are like life, and her quiet companion, death.”

But nothing was eternal, and I could never go back home. Death fluttered over the world like a breeze, stirring our hair, and I knew it well. I’d quested through Traum. Battled Omens, sprites—loneliness and longing. I’d made the agonizing pilgrimage from Six to Sybil.

“She believes herself a mother and a god, nurturing Traum with stories of the Omens and faith. But is it godly to punish your subjects for questioning you? Is it motherly to demand resolute devotion?”

It’s about a woman who tries her best, an errant knight who falls in love with her, and a precious limestone gargoyle. It’s about what we lose and what we gain, the arduous journey of self-discovery—the painful, beautiful burden of living.