The time came just a few weeks later.

  It was a warm evening with a cool breeze, summer air that promised autumn would be fast arriving. I stood at the edge of the keep and looked down on the depression we’d cut into the earth below it as all of the arrangements were finalized and the elves began to assemble.

  As I watched, I thought of Alcuon. I thought of Aranar. I thought further back, toward old Maia and Finuel, and past them to the very moment where I’d first come into existence.

  I felt as if it had taken me a long, long time to get here.

  “Nervous?”

  I turned to see that Hassina had joined me on the battlements. “No,” I said, turning my attention back down to the elves gathering below us. My nerves were too battle-tempered to be much bothered by a night where I had every reason to believe that all would go according to plan and there was no risk that anyone would die.

  “Ranival says that he’s ready,” Hassina said. “And unless I’m mistaken….”

  “That means I can start,” I said. I hadn’t been in contact with the [Wild Bond] as I’d gathered my thoughts on the rampart. I was going to need a lot of focus for the effort to come.

  I turned back to her once more, my eyes finding her own. In her face I saw a quiet need. Had she come to me because she thought that I’d alleviate whatever guilt she now felt for having gotten her way in the judgement?

  It was poor timing, if that were the case. Thoughts of Alcuon rested heavily in my mind, on this night. Seeing Hassina made me think of Seriana, doomed to unnecessary centuries of the loneliness that I now felt—and that I would want to spare anyone.

  “You should go and take your place with the others,” I told her. “I’ll begin in just a moment.”

  A faded pain seemed to flit through her expression, and she nodded. “Lux Irovex.”

  She left me, and I resumed gazing down at the assembling elves. We’d finished excavating as deep as we intended to, and the site of the ritual was now in what was to become Cradle’s central garden.

  The stone of the ground had been carved with grooves and runes, then encircled with the benches that were now becoming occupied. A raised central platform was surrounded by a depressed ring that had been carved around it and filled with dark, rich soil.

  Arranged on and around the platform were our channelers and musicians. I’d trained each of them to do the work that was needed, tonight. My own drums stood unattended, waiting.

  The platform had an empty pit at its center, and this was the site where we would plant the tree. First, though, the pit would function as a pool that held the blood of Eli. Her carcass had been healed and preserved. It nearby, at the ready.

  Everything was at the ready.

  I waited another minute for the last of the elves to arrive, then rose into the air and floated down to land on the central platform. Very quickly, I felt myself becoming the center of everyone’s attention. They knew were going to begin.

  I looked into the sky. Somewhere past all that mist were the stars, and somewhere beyond even those was my mother-creator, Sabina, as cold and distant as she ever was.

  She would be watching, tonight. Had to be.

  That was my plan, at least.

  “Tonight,” I announced. “I will tell you an old, unfinished story. I will not tell you the whole of it: no elf alone can tell the whole of it. But I can tell my part.”

  I stepped toward my drums, then struck them three times with my palms—two deep, rapid notes followed by a final one that boomed out and echoed off the stones around us.

  I spoke, and my voice carried far:

  “Once upon a time in the heavens, the Midnight Empress sought new beauties to look upon.”

  Cut quartz had been inserted into the ground at regular intervals, flush with the stone around it. They were for more than decoration: they were necessary components of the observation spell that Luthiel, Seriana, and Fireesha now oversaw.

  Still, they glittered like a regular array of stars. As the light of the mists above us faded and reddened, the world darkened and the quartz became more prominent.

  “A mood had come upon her, an inspired mania. She sought to make a novel thing, one new and different from the divine power of her music and the cosmic perfection of her night. She sought to create something that would itself bear forth the spark of creation, a work that would propagate beauty through the realms eternally. She knew that her mood would be satisfied only by the creation… of life.”

  From behind me, I heard pipes, bells, and beads sounding together, their sounds entwining into one long musical sigh.

  “And with her calculating mind, her dividing eye, and her delicate, precise fingers, she set to work. She wove them from the sight of starlight glittering upon mist in the dark. She wove them from the sound of harp strings that have been strummed to sing a secret word. She wove them from the thought that guides mana as it burns to make a magic light. And when she finished her work, she played the Song of Creation upon the Glittering Strings and whispered a divine word that evoked them into being:”

  I paused. Waited. Then I whispered: “Elvenkind,” and a chorus of whispers filled the air around me, building and reverberating until the word filled the place of our gathering.

  I continued. “Every one of you is an inheritor of that moment when I and my siblings stepped out of the moonlit mists of Anar,” I said. Then I raised my voice. “Anar! It was a realm above realms, a realm that existed at the footsteps to the heavens.”

  The sounds of harps and lyres filled the air behind me, their music quiet and steady. This time, though, the music didn’t fade, but continued as I spoke.

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  “There the elves lived in an ignorant bliss, a childhood that might have lasted a dozen years and might have lasted an eternity. It does not matter how much time there was, only that for the firstborn, our memories of that place are as numerous as there are droplets in a summer storm. Anar was a world shrouded by heavenly mists, and filled with incomparable wonders. We speak little of it, the firstborn, except to one another: and yet today I must begin by telling you a story of one of its eternal children—an elf, a girl, a fool.”

  I tapped out a fast melody on the hollow wooden pipes beside my drums, then struck the deep, booming note that I had earlier.

  “In that place, the Lady of Sable Graces taught us everything we needed to go and propagate her vision across the cosmos. She taught us magic. She taught us art. She taught us that both are one. And, often….”

  I let my sentence trail away. I smiled. I tapped out the same melody as before on my hollow wood beside my drums.

  “Often the Queen Most Beautiful would look upon a certain child with much the look of a poet who knows not how to address the faults they find in the verses before them, who knows not how to correct the mistakes of their own hand, or even whether such a thing is possible.”

  I smiled again. “The disdain of the goddess was borne with great displeasure by the little elf, who often fled her lessons to retreat into the boundless vaults of the wilds—for Anar had such fields, seas, and forests as the gods themselves had dreamed. And one day as she sat and despaired in the depths of the forest, which was her sanctuary, a bird spoke to her.”

  A flute joined the soft thrum of harps and lyres, adding a flighty tune.

  “They were small, but had rainbow plumage that glittered in the light as if made of jewels. And while it was strange that a bird should speak aloud, Anar had many peculiarities, and the girl thought little of it. ‘Bizarre creature!’ the bird declared. ‘Soft skin? Woven gown? Silver hair? You are a strange sort of animal! What is the meaning of this?’”

  The flute grew excitable behind me, and I waited a moment until it had faded into the growing music before continuing.

  “‘Meaning?’ asked the girl, growing offended. ‘The meaning is in what is seen. I am made by the hand of Sabina, and hence I bear her likeness. I am an elf.’”

  The flute made a few high, loud notes of surprise.

  “‘Elf?’ cried the bird. ‘Sabina? Why come here, then? Surely no creation of the Midnight Empress belongs in a forest, alone.”

  Again I tapped out a short melody on my wooden pipes.

  “Hearing this, the child was reminded of her unfortunate lot. She hung her head, despondent once more. ‘I am a poor elf,’ she explained, looking down at her hands with pity. ‘I shoot straight, but to the wrong targets. My music is no special thing, my attention wavers in the fine art of magic, and my hands can never craft what my mind’s eye imagines.’”

  I smiled as the music behind me seemed to dim, then continued: “The bird heard this and asked: ‘and these things are what it is to be an elf?’

  “And the child answered: ‘To be an elf is to have the gift of sensibilities. We must take that which we see in our mind’s eye and create it in the world outside. To bring about what we desire within is to improve what is found without. This is the purpose for which the Queen Most Beautiful created us.’

  “But the bird only laughed. ‘You are absurd, child,’ they said. ‘There is no outside, and there is no inside: the world that is witnessed and the witnesser are each one and the same, and no clever act of sight can carve apart that which is seen from the seer who sees it!’

  “The child pouted. ‘Senseless creature,’ she said. ‘Begone from me. You know nothing of art.’”

  Behind me, the flute struck a shrill note. “‘Begone?’ asked the bird. ‘Begone? Shall Sabina’s misbegotten give orders to the creatures of the wood?’ And of all the things they could have done, they laughed. The flitted down from their branch and landed atop the child’s head. Then, before the child could protest, they touched their beak to her forehead for but a moment.”

  Behind me, the music suddenly swelled, and again a tapped out a rhythm on my wooden pipes and drums, once more ending with the deep, resonant boom.

  “The child had a vision that seemed to last forever. She could not see where the line between herself and the world ended, and she floated above all as if outside of her own body. To her eyes, there were no distinctions, just a blur of colors like that of a stained glass window, only a thousandfold more resplendent. To her ears, there were no words or names, only an everflowing symphony of sound. She lost the power to distinguish even between the beautiful and the ugly, between the harsh and the soothing. Everything was good, and there was no pain.”

  I let the music play behind me for a while, collecting myself as I allowed the imaginations of my audience to try and conceive of what I’d described. Then I spoke again.

  “At last, the girl arrived once more to herself. Only now she felt different. ‘Creature,’ she said to the bird in awe. ‘What have you shown me?’”

  “‘Only a small part of what I see,’ said the bird. Their many-hued feathers glittered like jewels. ‘Do you wish for more, little elf?’”

  I paused again.

  Do you wish for more?

  “The child thought that at last she’d found a respite from the quiet, cruel judgements of the Lady of Sable Graces,” I said. “In that instant she sought to somehow turn the wonder of the moment she’d been shown into some piece of magic or music that she could show the goddess to at last earn the approval she’d forever been denied. And she felt something else, too: a craving that stirred in a place that held deeper desires than even her want for the love of her mother-creator. But she did not realize this, not yet. And even if she’d seen it, she couldn’t have named what she felt.”

  Slowly, a smile spread across my face. “To the unnamed bird, she said yes. In fact, she begged him with a desperate obeisance that matched her earlier dismissive pride. And the bird in the wood taught her many things. He taught her to breathe, to see, to wait, to listen, and to sing. He taught her that the whole of the love that her heart might feel could belong to the smallest of moments. He showed her secret things that only rain and wind and fire can teach: how to dance in time with life itself and pluck at the strings of the soul.”

  I waited. I wondered what they were all picturing, how they saw the child, the bird, what they made of the mystical secrets that my story promised. How close was it to reality? It didn’t matter; I was telling a story.

  “In time the child forgot the very reason she had begged the bird to teach her, so absorbed she became in their lessons. And this was fortunate, because the more she learned, the more distant the Midnight Empress grew to her. When our lady looked upon the child, it was not with disdain… but distrust. The child’s works improved with each passing day, often impressing her siblings… but never Sabina. She seemed to sense a taint.”

  A discordant element worked its way into the music behind me, and I continued.

  “Time passed, though I cannot say whether it was years or ages in that timeless place. At last we noticed that we were growing, and when we asked our mother-creator why this was, she said that the time for our departure was coming, that mere years remained before we were sent forth from Anar, never to return, to seed the cosmos with the magic she had taught us. And so it was.”

  I struggled not to become lost in the memory of childhood’s end. We’d known we would never return, but we couldn’t possibly know what that would mean.

  My eyes found Luthiel. He sat in the farthest row, Seriana at his side, his eyes seeming distant, lost.

  I continued: “We were both cast out and set free. Grown at last, and thinking ourselves to know many things, we proceeded into the mortals realms with eagerness, trepidation—and fear.”

  The music slowed and grew more quiet. I couldn’t help but glance up into the mists, which had now almost completely darkened into this world’s red night.

  “We were grown,” I said. “And we were free. But we were lost and alone. For though she had created us, the Lady of Sable Graces loved us only as a painter loves a painting, not as a mother loves their child. She made no home for us, intending that we should wander. A god had created us, and yet compared with the races of the realms that lie before us, we were strangely godless.”

  Slowly, my eyes hardened as they drifted across the crowd of elves before me.

  “And godless, we wandered.”