Chapter 57: Ch. 56 The Price of Salvation

Julie stirred, her groggy mind full of muted panic. Everything was there, but she couldn’t put them together, like trying to grasp some difficult concept just out of her reach. However, the intense sense of urgency was hard to misunderstand and she forced her eyes open.

“Thank goodness, thank goodness.”

The voice was hoarse, full of pain and happiness, and Julie recognised it. She tried to sit up, but a gentle push on her chest stopped her.

“Look at me first.”

As if only now realising she could see, Julie looked and saw and there was a dusky sky and a blob, a blob that was then Sammy. A Sammy with red eyes and eyelashes glittering with frozen tears.

Julie wanted to kiss her wife. If she wasn’t so out of it, she would have, but it was like her thoughts and muscles weren’t connected right now.

“Watch my finger.”

Julie heard the words, took a long few seconds to understand them and only then obeyed. Once she did, Sammy let out a relieved sigh, that hand falling to cup Julie’s cheek, the sensation travelling through the scarf, softly burning Julie’s skin.

“Thank goodness,” Sammy said again, voice full of happiness.

After a few minutes of just sitting there, Julie pulled herself back together enough to move.

“Does anything hurt?” Sammy asked.

“No,” Julie said, her throat dry.

Sammy nodded. “Sit up slowly, no rush,” she said.

So Julie did, naturally looking around as she did. But it didn’t make sense. She saw things, and they didn’t make sense. Again and again, she looked, but it didn’t made sense.

There were no wild beasts. There was rock. There were incredible fires like volcanoes off in the distance, flaring high into the air as they billowed steam.

And then there was Sammy, sitting on the floor. The more Julie looked, the more she knew something was wrong, until it finally clicked: Sammy didn’t just look pale, but sickly pale. Knowing that, she saw how tense Sammy was, then looked more, examining every bit of her wife.

It wasn’t obvious at a glance, but Julie saw the unnatural way Sammy sat, keeping her leg flat against the ice.

“Your leg,” Julie whispered.

Sammy made no move to hide it. “Broken,” she said, strained.

The panic that had settled now returned with a vengeance. Julie froze, looking at Sammy’s face all she could do.

After smiling back for a long moment, Sammy bowed her head, whispered, “The gods have forsaken me. I may have overreacted and drawn too much of their power.”

“What do we do?” Julie asked.

Sammy slowly turned her gaze to the horizon in a certain direction. “The sled cannot be fixed. Take the rations and return to the outpost.”

Julie nodded along, thinking that made sense. They made it this far, they could make it back. Then, Dr Monnay could—

“And leave you here?” Julie asked, the belated realisation crumbling the precious little composure she had, eyes wide and heart so tight that every beat hurt, easier to squeeze blood from a stone.

“You cannot carry me and enough supplies for both of us,” Sammy said. She spoke without emotion, level, simply stating the facts. “If you bring me along, we will both die.”

Beat after beat, Julie felt the pain, pain worse than death. “I’d rather that than live without you.”

For a while, nothing more was said, but then Sammy’s eyes glistened. “Honestly, I’m glad to hear you say that. The thought of dying here alone after you left me was more terrifying than I can put into words. Well, not more so than when I thought you were dead.”

Julie swallowed the lump in her throat, some sense returning. “Then… what do we do? Try to make it back?”

Sammy smiled, tinged with pain, and looked in the opposite direction she had earlier. “If we are to die, why not by Lilith’s hands? We have come this far.”

Not wanting to imagine death by starvation—or dehydration once they became too weak to drink—Julie nodded. “Okay.”

Before going, some things had to be handled. Julie wasn’t skilled, but was trained in the basics, so she checked Sammy’s injury. As fortunate as a broken leg could be, the skin wasn’t broken, no risk of bleeding out to worry about, and it didn’t look out of position.

“I tried to lift you to put a blanket underneath. Just that, without divine power, I am, well, as weak as I look,” Sammy said, ending in a light tone with a smile.

Julie barely managed to smile back. “It looks set, so I think you just need a splint.”

“Mm, it may even just be a fracture,” Sammy said.

Julie didn’t believe that. If Sammy had said it was broken, then it was broken.

While the sled was beyond use, it wasn’t beyond reuse, Julie picking out two pieces of wood and using a spare scarf to sandwich Sammy’s leg between them. Not pretty, but Sammy could lift her leg without causing more pain.

Next, Julie packed all the food into one bag. She knew her limits. If something else came up, then that was the end for them. She couldn’t bring spare clothes or the big pot or even their weapons.

Finally, she worked her cloak into a bit of a sling. It wasn’t perfect, but it made it easier to carry Sammy, important now that Sammy was weak.

After eating a little, they set off. As they did, something occurred to Julie and she couldn’t help but laugh.

“Pray tell, what is so funny?” Sammy asked—curious, not upset.

“I guess we’re still going by your plan. Here I am, taking you to Lilith after you exhausted yourself,” Julie said.

Sammy smiled, bumping Julie’s head with her own. “What a good wife you are.”

Once the laughter faded, though, Julie was glad Sammy couldn’t see her face. Her dark thoughts had begun the moment she’d picked Sammy up, finally realising how light her wife was.

Julie wanted to know what was so beautiful about such a delicate woman. A beauty that couldn’t be touched lest she broke, couldn’t be held and loved. No wonder princesses and noble ladies needed so many maids and to marry a gentle-man.

Rather than this, Julie loved the Sammy who was invincible. A stupid thought for a stupid woman, Julie knew, her smile ironic. But more seriously, she finally understood how Sammy could love her. She understood how beautiful it was to draw a bow and swing a sword and carry a heavy pack. How beautiful it was to be together for hours on end. How beautiful she, herself, was.

A shame Julie could only love the Sammy she had lost, but that didn’t mean she loved this Sammy any less. The heart wasn’t so rational. If anything, she loved this Sammy more, overwhelmed with the need to protect her. A need she knew she could never fulfil, but the heart wasn’t rational, demanding the impossible.

So Julie walked, walked with strength she never knew she had. Hour after hour passed. A day. They only ever stopped because of Julie’s hunger, thirst, bladder, or tiredness. Sammy worked around Julie’s breaks, and Julie often heard Sammy’s breathing change, falling in and out of sleep.

The only concern Julie had that first day was Sammy’s temperature. Without the gods’ blessing, Sammy struggled to stay warm. So Julie had carefully filled the hand warmers with a bit more ice, starved fire inside burning hotter, and let Sammy hold all four. With those, she was content that Sammy slept more soundly.

The second day had a fresh concern. Julie hadn’t been entirely sure of the direction before, Sammy only able to loosely guide by the sun, stars drowned out at all hours now. Then, after a fitful sleep, Julie saw shadows on the horizon behind them. That at least reassured her she was heading the right way.

Funnily enough, she wasn’t worried or scared of the wild beasts like before. They were already dead women walking. All there was to do was walk, so that’s what she did. It wasn’t even worth bothering Sammy for, so Julie let her wife rest, knowing that the broken leg wasn’t the only thing Sammy was recovering from.

Step by step, she crossed the ice.

On her next break, she looked back, unsurprised to see them closer, surprised they weren’t closer. Then she walked, Sammy resting against her back, spurred on by those soft breaths. If she could listen to them for just another second, she could take another step.

Hour after hour, Julie walked, only stopping when the light-headedness threatened to topple her. Julie lay her wife down gently on the cloak, misty eyed and lips chapped. Julie was afraid to move the scarf any more, afraid the beautiful skin would be cracked from the cold or rubbed raw.

What good was being delicate? Julie idly thought that as she carefully fed Sammy warm water. It wasn’t as ingenious as many of Sammy’s ideas, but Julie put a bit of ice in a metal cup and also in a metal bowl, then poured some divine fire into the cup and left the bowl on top. Without a lid, the steam escaped and fire soon burned out, the bowl filled with hot water that quickly cooled.

“Make sure to hide behind me. Don’t let the wind blow on you,” Julie said softly.

“Okay,” Sammy said, obedient.

Julie smiled, her hand coming over to rub Sammy’s cheek through the scarf. How good it was to be delicate—all Sammy said was one word and Julie’s heart was full of warmth and praises.

Eyes closed, Julie chewed on the dried meat, drifting in and out of sleep as she sat there, keeping the wind off Sammy. Maybe an hour passed, maybe ten. All she knew was she felt her strength had returned.

Little by little, Julie got Sammy back onto her back, then set off. She spared a glance behind, unsurprised to see the wild beasts, surprised to see they weren’t upon them. Though she didn’t have the spare energy to think, some of Sammy’s words drifted back to her.

“They only care about the hero?” she mumbled, words barely stumbling through her scarf.

Sammy’s ears didn’t hear, now near deaf with the scarf and cloak covering her ears.

The thought ended there. Julie walked, and walked, and walked, thin slit of sight only as far as her next step. A slow pace that grew ever slower, but never stopped.

Time had lost all meaning. There was no meaning left in existence but to take another step. So Julie did. Step after step, she walked, slowing, but never stopping.

But even uncounted, time kept track. A little over two days since the incident, Julie took another step and the wind stopped. She even stumbled forwards, that pressure pushing her back now gone, but she caught herself, a burst of strength coming at the thought of hurting Sammy with a fall.

Slowly, Julie looked up.

Through her slit of vision, she barely made out the crater in front, something in the middle of it. She both knew and didn’t dare think about it.

But Sammy, even in her state, had no fear of the gods and said, “Lilith.”

With the calmness of a person walking to a righteous death, Julie loosed the pack on her front and put it down, then took off her snowglasses, leaving them on top. It took a moment to adjust to the sudden brightness, then she turned around. Unsurprised, she saw the wild beasts in countless forms, surprised, she saw their eyes were white. Only a few steps away, yet they didn’t pounce.

Julie turned her attention forwards and saw Lilith—the fallen god who had brought corruption upon these lands, corruption that had tainted souls and encouraged sin.

The madness catching up to her, Julie momentarily felt compelled to bow before Lilith and thank her for the sin of loving Sammy. Fortunately, she was too tired to act quickly, her body barely moving before she stopped herself.

Looking closer, she realised that “Lilith” was a statue. It looked like marble, glowing in the sun’s light, smooth—smooth, but cracked. Cracked like it had been smashed apart and put back together countless times with thick, black tar.

“That is her avatar,” Sammy said. “Her conduit to the world through which she can act. When I met Liliana at the temples, she spoke to me through a similar statue. Well, one without cracks.”

A god could not simply fall to earth any more than a star could. However, a god could be contained, isolated, and left to vent her power in the least harmful way. Just that “least harmful” was not the same “harmless”.

For a long moment, wife and wife stared, then Sammy said, “Please, carry me in your arms. I promised to confront Lilith and I shan’t do so from behind you.”

Julie smiled, thinking her wife hadn’t changed. Even after going from an unshakeable oak to a dainty flower, she still faced the same wind with the same pride.

It took a moment, first needing to get Sammy down safely, then to pick her up comfortably, but Julie soon held her wife in a bridal carry. Though that made it harder to see where she was walking, she made up for it by taking each step carefully. A journey this long, what did it matter if the last hundred steps were slow?

Step after step, she descended into the crater, the sight of Lilith growing ever clearer. Being constrained to stone couldn’t constrain her beauty. Before her fall, she was the goddess of the moons and waves, of animals and winter, of unrequited love and widows.

Liliana took up the mantle of the youthful beauty, gentle and soft. And Menses was the oldest of the trio, the kindly mother on the verge of old age. Lilith held a mature and elegant beauty, serene, her love deep and steady. Unfalteringly calm, yet, like the ocean, that calmness was not without danger. She was neither mother nor daughter, but the third of the trio: the lover.

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Once they approached, the statue came to life. It didn’t move, but it breathed, chest rising and falling.

“Please, put me down,” Sammy said.

Julie came to a stop and refused. “I can’t,” she said.

“Please,” Sammy said again, begging the only thing she could do.

“How will you support your weight on just one leg? I can’t,” Julie said.

Hearing the reason, Sammy knew she had no chance, so looked back to Lilith. “Closer, then.”

Julie took one step, then another, then another, then—

Lilith’s eyes opened.

Neither Sammy nor Julie had fear in their eyes, having long accepted their deaths. Lilith, seeing this, drew her mouth into a smile. A sweet smile, hiding poison within.

“Greetings, hero. Hast thou come to do battle?”

Sammy smiled, hiding humour. “Do I look ready for a fight? If you want to kill me, then kill us both. However, to be honest, I did not intend to fight even before I was forsaken,” she said.

Despite the cracks, Lilith’s avatar moved smoothly, more like she was covered in scars than broken. “Oh really?”

“I do not blindly believe everything I am told, so I wished to hear what you have to say,” Sammy said.

Lilith didn’t so much as move a finger, but her presence grew. “What is it that thou wishes to hear this goddess say?”

“What they claim you did that was so terrible even your wife has turned against you,” Sammy said, welcoming death.

And death she welcomed, even before she finished the sky darkening and air crackling, ice crystals forming only to be ground to dust, glittering violet in the ethereal light falling off of Lilith’s avatar.

But Sammy didn’t flinch, squarely meeting Lilith’s gaze.

“You wish to hear?” Lilith asked, a deafening whisper.

“I do,” Sammy said.

A moment, then the ice dust faded, crater returned to the eerie silence. Lilith gestured for them to come closer and, Sammy nodding, Julie did so, stopping barely a stride away. Lilith gestured to sit, this time Julie having no choice as her body fell back, landing on a chair made of snow—soft, yet warm, keeping the plants underneath safe from harsh frost. Julie looked to the side and saw another chair, so carefully put Sammy there, somehow their hands ending up joined, fingers entwined.

“You seem familiar with the relationship between myself and Ana,” Lilith said.

“An educated guess. If you could tell us clearly, we would appreciate it,” Sammy said.

Lilith’s smile grew crooked. “There is little more to say. We fell in love and eventually wed.”

Sammy nodded, then leaned in. “Was it love at first sight? Who made the first move? What was your first kiss like?” she asked, firing off the questions one after another.

Lilith stared back for a moment before sighing. “Our situation was one of… sisters. Our roles had us work closely together, along with Menses, so we naturally grew closer. However, it became clear that my feelings for her differed to how I felt towards Menses, and I felt the same in her, in how she looked at me, spoke to me. I yearned to see her, hear her, and ached when it came time to part. I felt joy at her smile and intense pain at her tears.

“One day, on the cusp of winter turning to spring, we played among the flowers. In the summer, I would give her lilies to wear in her hair, and she gave me violets in late winter. This day, she carefully put the violets in my hair, her face in front of mine, and all I could think about was kissing her lips. It was as if she had planned it, pretending to struggle with the task she had done so many times before, her lips coated in the juices of pears we had just eaten, and she bit her lip in focus, her little movements drawing my attention.

“So I kissed her. She did not act surprised, responding to my kiss in an instant, her hands already tangled in my hair and body coming close to press against mine. Blissful. Between gods, there are only feelings. What began as a kiss became everything thereafter and we lay there afterwards amongst the flowers.”

As Lilith finished, she had a warm smile on her lips, gaze seeing the distant past. As for Sammy, she was leaning so far forwards that Julie worried her wife would fall from the chair.

“So then you married?” Sammy asked.

Lilith shook her head. “Matters between gods are both fleeting and enduring. We deeply loved each other, but to bind our lives together is not a trivial thing. It took many, many years of trust and affection, and even then it took Menses playing our mother to give us the last push.”

Seeing Sammy’s furrowed brow, Lilith explained: “Put simply, we were chided for being loose.”

Seeing Sammy’s intense gaze, Lilith further explained: “That is, she told us that, with how many times she had accidentally witnessed us, we ought to have known what we wanted.”

Seeing Sammy’s humoured smile, Lilith explained no more. Once Sammy realised no more would be said, she asked, “And your names—is it from lily?”

Lilith sighed. “Originally, in your language, we were Lely, taking a part of violet and of lily, which we exchanged with our vows. Lelytha and Lelyana. However, given the sound of the ‘le’ in violet, it was heard as Lily. Other changes occurred too, but the first ‘Li’ is still for violet. Perhaps, she intentionally made that forgotten.”

Sammy listened closely, both pleased with her guess and humbled by the melancholy Lilith—Lelytha—held, leaking into her voice.

Again, Sammy waited for the silence to linger before breaking it. “And what happened between you to cause this punishment?”

Lelytha didn’t react outwardly, yet her inward reaction bled out, snow falling. Soft and gentle, but piercingly cold.

“You are familiar with Bairloum?” Lelytha whispered, colder, sharper than the snow.

“Unfortunately,” Sammy replied.

Lelytha’s lips quirked into an empty smile. “He had feelings for Ana, I believe even attempted to prevent the wedding. She did not tell me. I do not know why. Perhaps, because she felt nothing for him. Perhaps, to spare me the worry. Perhaps, she liked his attention. She did not tell me, so I can only speculate.

“Whatever her reason, he grew sick with desire and, to break us up, he pressured me to lay with him. I resisted and he grew violent and, in his violence, Ana found us, clothing torn and bodies slick with sweat. She did not hear me out, but listened to his lies. If not for our bond that would have taken her with me, she would have had me put to death. So I came to be the fallen god.”

There was a long and aching silence afterwards, Sammy truly without words. It was fortunate she had lost her strength, otherwise Julie’s hand would have been crushed, squeezing it with all her might.

Sammy had read of the capriciousness of the old gods, but this was unbelievable. Yet it fit what she knew and was more robust than anything else she had read or that Liliana had told her. Not only that, but she trusted her intuition and felt sincerity from Lelytha that Liliana had never had.

“You have my sympathy,” Sammy said, the only comfort she could offer.

Lelytha chuckled, her laughter slow and deep. “Thank you.”

Not one to stay idle, Sammy worked through her thoughts. “So then, the corruption is your pain leaking out?” she asked.

Lelytha nodded.

“And the wild beasts, they sought me out because my power came from Liliana?” Sammy asked.

Lelytha nodded.

“And that’s why there aren’t many incidents when there isn’t a hero,” Sammy said, talking more to herself.

But Lelytha still nodded. “Your people still have a trace of her power, so I keep my children away in the forests and mountains.”

Sammy froze. “Your children?” she asked.

Lelytha softly smiled. “I had watched over the animals before; however, they were taken from me and all I could hold on to were their shadows. Do not think I hold a grudge, though. It is the fleeting nature of animals to live and die, more so for shadows.”

Sighing, Sammy patted her chest, relieved.

“Any other questions, fallen hero?” Lelytha asked, an eyebrow raised.

Sammy didn’t squabble over the moniker, but it did give her a flash of insight. Voice soft, she said, “It is because I am fallen that we can talk, isn’t it?”

Lelytha nodded.

Whether or not Sammy saw correctly, she couldn’t know, thinking Lelytha looked ashamed. However, whether or not correct, Sammy felt the truth was something to be said.

“You are justified to hate her,” Sammy said.

She did not couch it as her opinion or soften it at all. No, she put it out there as a fact because, to her, it was. Any reasoning that could absolve Liliana necessarily cursed her for not giving Lelytha a chance to explain. What of unconditional love, what of forgiveness, what of heat-of-the-moment?

The weight of all that was felt in Sammy’s words.

Hollow, Lelytha asked with an ironic smile, “How can I hate my wife?”

Sammy looked down for a moment, then met Lelytha’s gaze once more. “A friend told me that love is a moment. The wife you loved is in the past and she cannot come back, no matter how much you lie. Even if she was here right now, begging you to go back to how things used to be, you cannot.

“And the reason you cannot is because of her, not you.”

Silence, Julie not even daring to breathe, heart still. She had followed everything happening easily enough, for once everyone speaking in Schtish—or so it seemed. What Sammy had said made sense. Ignoring that they were talking about gods, Julie understood what it meant for feelings to change. How could she ever look at Sammy like she had before falling in love?

The other side of it, Julie saw in Lelytha her own mother, taken advantage of by a man and then left to die. A fate apparently not even goddesses could escape.

For the first time in the conversation, Julie spoke, and she simply said, “You deserve happiness.”

While Lelytha looked at Julie with a frown, not expecting the hero’s companion to speak up and certainly not to say that, Sammy just laughed softly, squeezing Julie’s hand. Her wife always had a sweet way with words.

“My wife is correct. What evil did you commit? There is no need for penance or suffering, so why not find happiness? Love comes in all shapes and forms, and even then, love is not equivalent to joy,” Sammy said, necessary to support her wife.

Lelytha could only stare at them for a long moment, then her lips slowly curved. “Indeed, why am I punishing myself?” she asked.

Knowing it to be rhetorical, Sammy didn’t answer, but she knew, knew very well, how it just happened to be that women were punished for men’s crimes. Whether it was the way she dressed or how she was unmarriageable afterwards, she suffered the role of instigator and victim. There were always questions for the woman, never for the man, and those questions always carried the thick scent of blame.

“I saw you in a special picture made by an old hero,” Sammy said, pulling Lelytha out of her thoughts. “You looked beautiful in it, and you look beautiful now. For all your cracks, you are whole, complete. You are stronger than I can even begin to imagine for coming through what you did and suffered for as long as you have, yet are still tender enough to speak with us like equals.”

As soon as she finished speaking, Sammy stood up, her splinted leg sending out a jolt of blinding pain, but she didn’t falter. The next moment, she felt Julie’s arm across her back, supporting her.

Two steps, they closed the distance to Lelytha, the fallen god who brought corruption and sin into the world, and they embraced her.

“At least for this moment, you aren’t alone, and you are loved,” Sammy said, tears rolling down her cheeks, staining the stone. Julie, too, cried. Cried for the woman her mother had never the chance to become.

After a few seconds, they were embraced back. The avatar couldn’t shed tears, but divine power seeped out her cracks, corruption dissolving, and it was like the bits of stone were joined by liquid light.

A shame there was no one to observe the fantastical sight, beautiful beyond words.

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