Wild ​Reverence

by Rebecca Ross

“A name shapes a divine as much as the stars do,”

“Matilda?” my mother repeated, surprised. “Why?” “It means mighty in battle.”

War only makes love flame brighter, defiant. It seems to bloom from the bloodshed you leave behind, unfurling from the most unlikely places.

But the truth is … there has been no divine born to the Underlings or the Skywards since.

The Underling clan was curious about my birth, my unnamed magic, my unclaimed horoscope, and—most of all—who my father was, for the courts below knew he must be an enemy. A god of the haughty, conniving Skywards.

“Your daughter will be a messenger, carrying words and tidings and proclamations from one realm to the next.”

Death was moonlight on a sword, an ocean eddy at high tide. Ephemeral and vicious and cold, like frost over iron.

“‘I, Bade of Underling, god of war, swear a salt vow to Matilda, the herald of the gods. I will be her loyal ally and will never betray her. I will aid her whenever she is in peril or in need. I will instruct her on how to fight and defend herself, until she becomes like iron. Should I break this vow, she has the right to end my immortality, and my name will be disgraced.’”

“Asking questions about mortals is a weakness?” “Feeling for them is,” he corrected.

“there are two places you must physically defend, but only one can end your immortality. Your mind or your heart. The one that becomes your fault line depends on you.

I felt it, then, although I kept it to myself. There was something dark and slumbering within me. One day, it would stir, and I did not know how to prepare for it.

And I would like to think my story began long ago when I came into the world as a pale, silent boy, destined to one day die. But it truly begins here, in this moment when my dreams grew bones and teeth and skin in the waking realm. The moment I met Red.

You hold on to her. But who could hold on to the wind? And—better yet—who would be so foolish as to trust—to love—such a wild being?

“You are parchment, ink, cloves. You are water dripping down stone, and the smoke of a burning scroll. You are something deeper, darker still. Something I am not sure how to describe, which means you came from the realm far below.

“Herald?” Rowena called. “What sort of goddess is made when Fate and Death come together in unison after centuries of enmity and strife?”

“We create a goddess of peace.”

And I wondered how it was possible for my heart to miss something that I had never experienced.

This is the beginning of the end, I thought. If heartless gods can be made soft by such love, we are all doomed.

And we might meet in startled brevity, like the moon eclipsing the sun every thirteen winters. A meeting that felt so fierce the whole land took note of its shadow. But we were never meant to be bound together. Not even in pretense.

Matilda of Underling Matilda of Skyward Beneath it, she had drawn my six-point constellation. The stars of a herald, the flight of a kestrel. I would not have thought this odd, but she had inked another six-point constellation directly beneath it. Upon first glance, it looked like a random collection of stars, but as I leaned in closer, I saw that they were a perfect reflection of my stars, as if two parts had come together to make a whole. Twelve points, she had written beneath them, counting the stars above as well as the ones below. And then, soul-bearer.

I stared up at the sky, naming the constellations, until I found hers—a bright six points. Herald of the gods. A kestrel in flight. I willed those stars to burn always, because I could not bear to imagine them ever going dark.

She was not mine by spoken vow but something deeper. Something that felt older, stronger, darker, like a language that had been sung centuries ago but had now been forgotten. Something that simmered in the blood, calling to me, calling to her.

“Matilda,” I said again. “Come back to me.”

“Return to me, Red.”

“If it takes you,” I said, “then let it also take me. Don’t leave me behind like this, Red.”

When one of our kind loves something that is mortal … there is always a sacrifice that must be made. Although perhaps you just began to pay it.”

she was beautiful in a way that robbed breath and stole into dreams.

Dear Matilda, I wrote. I let the words flow for her. And when the ink dried, I gave my very heart to the fire.

He longs to worship you, but not in the way you think.”

I long for you. I do not know when this happened, when the current rose and when I let it take me, willingly, but there came a moment when I looked at you and could not breathe. There was a moment when I watched you depart, and I wanted to fall to my knees.

My life feels brief as the dew when I compare it to your ocean, but if you will have me, this is what I offer you.

My home is your home. My arms are a haven for you to rest. My last name is yours if you desire it. I will love you to my grave, and even beyond it, when the mists welcome me, when I am hopefully very old and gray and grouchy and have spent the seasons beside you when you are here and dreaming of you when you are gone.

“Because she is yours, as you are hers,” Bade replied quietly. “And she is precious to me.”

I knew this would be my fate when it came to loving her. She was everlasting; she was destined to come and go, like the cycle of seasons. And what was I? A humble mortal cursed to age and die. I was rooted to the ground, destined to return to the earth as dust. I could not hold her any more than I could the wind, but I loved her for it.

“Red, who hurt you?”

She could break me with a single word, and I waited for it.

We were doomed, she and I. One day, I would perish, and she would live on, endless as the stars. But if we were doomed, then let us fully embrace it.

And I thought that yes, time would be cruel to me. The winters would leave their mark upon me, year after year, and one day I would die and Matilda would lock my body in a tomb. But until that morning came, I would spend my hours worshipping her, learning what she liked, what she loved, what she needed.

I would have taken every single lash for her.

“This will break us both in the end,” I said. “It will break me, to live on when you have breathed your last. To visit the river, years from now, and see you in every current, in every rainfall, only to remember that you are gone.”

My name was destined to be blotted out of the divine myths and perhaps even forgotten amongst the poets and the bards as the seasons wheeled onward. Time did not favor such quiet stories. Once, I had feared this, until I realized my story was not one to be devoured by strangers. No, this was for him and for me. And if we wanted to tell it, we would in our own way.

“I would wait a thousand years for you,” Vincent said. “If you asked me, I would wait for you until only my bones remained upon an altar. But if you must leave again, then let me follow you, Red.”

Some stories claim that humans are beholden to the gods. But that is also not true. The divine is nothing without mortal hearts.