Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(72)
Just like Mama. Dead and undead all at once. Pain speared through me, hooked like a harpoon.
“Like Mama,” Malina said, echoing my thoughts even as my mind raced ahead. “Does that mean that she—that she can feel the things that happened to her?”
“And what does this woman’s curse have to do with us?” I added.
Sorai shifted her head once, just enough to spill her hair over her other shoulder. Even that small movement, the slick, snaking fall, was staggering to watch.
“The curse was vast and vicious,” she said. “So colossal it killed the witch who wrought it even as it took hold of that wretched mortal woman and her kin. It would dog her and her bloodline, ruin everyone around her that she loved, lay waste to our mother Mara’s tribe. And Mara was her people’s healer, their beating heart. She couldn’t stand by and merely watch. So she worked her own spell, an even larger one—shifting the curse to herself and her own line. It was a tremendous thing, a blazing sacrifice. Something only she could have done.”
I thought of Mara kneeling naked on that icy plateau from the dream, heat rising from her, those ground bones and powders with their patterns in the snow, blood sluicing down her arms. “What was the sacrifice?” I whispered, roiling with dread.
“Twofold, child,” Sorai answered, eyes sliding over to mine. “First, to summon an immaterial force—to give it flesh, make it attend to her—she offered raw material: the burned remnants of my youngest sister, weaned only a few months before. From her ashes, she clothed Death with mortal flesh, made it human enough to reckon with. To bargain with. To be swayed by the temptations of lovely flesh and blood.”
“Her own daughter?” Malina said. “She killed her own daughter for it?”
Sorai’s gray eyes held steady even as her voices dipped into a sibilant hiss. “The power we have isn’t always kind, child. It demands that we do what must be done, for those who can’t do it for themselves. The burden and the gift of the half divine.”
The legend of Mara and the spring god Jarilo she had birthed flicked through my mind; this wasn’t that, but it was something close. Mara had borne something into life, though it wasn’t exactly a son.
“Once Death stood before her, she offered it a trade: if she became its helpmeet, its courtesan and lover, Death would keep the curse at bay. When she wore out—for not even a half-divine woman could walk by Death’s side forever—a daughter of hers from each generation would take up the mantle. And so, from then on, there would always be two. One to carry on our line, the other to become the sacrifice.”
I knew where this was going, could see it, could feel it already. Desperately I scrabbled for anything else to keep the looming truth at bay. “So how are you still alive? Why is everyone young?”
“Because the curse could not be broken—it could merely be waylaid, like damming a river to change its course. Instead of preying on us and those we love, Death would do the opposite and simply pass us by. Whichever sister remained behind would become undying, upon the sacrifice of one of her own daughters. No peaceful death for the remaining daughter, but also no agony. We would stay young and hale forever, and Death would have a bride.”
She reached out and with a fingertip light as a breath, traced my profile from the space between my eyes down to the crests of my lips. All the wispy hairs at the back of my neck stood on end like lightning rods. “And not just any bride, but a singular one, who could weave magic into beauty. One versed in the arts and sciences, music and games, taught to speak of anything. The most exquisite sample of her kind, the brightest candle until she burned down to the wick. Down to the quick.”
“And we all agree to do this?” I whispered hotly. Not even the lapping currents of Sorai’s home-love could still this fury, the idea that someone might wrest Malina from me. “We have to give up our daughters and our sisters, and then live with it forever? How can anything be worse than that? Why don’t we just let it die? Stop having daughters, take the curse to the grave with us?”
“Do you truly think you are the first to have attempted such active problem-solving, child?” she demanded, flat. “We cannot do this. If our line were allowed to die, the curse would simply reach out its barbs and latch onto someone else. It is nearly a living thing in its own right, mindless magic, all hunger and no reason—we thwart it by living. We keep it at bay.”
“Then why did Mama run from it?” Malina asked, and I noticed with a start that she was using a fundamental and an overtone without singing, as if in response to Sorai’s striated voice. “Why didn’t she tell us anything about this? Why did she stop teaching us to gleam?”
“It was as Lisarah says—your mother loved your aunt more than anything. The decision is made within the three, between mother and both daughters, as to which is best equipped to serve. It is a willing sacrifice for all; it must be, for the spell to work as it was wrought. But though they decided together to offer Anais, once it was done your mother could not be consoled. She chose to raise her own daughters outside of coven, alone, with the understanding that she would return you once it was time. She wanted you raised to love each other freely, without knowing that one would have to lose the other. For that, she was willing to sacrifice everything we offer. The safety of the coven, the comforts. The love.”
I thought about Mama’s furies, the alternating tides of her moods, my insides buckling with the understanding of what she had tried to do for us. She’d tried to give us the little snatch of freedom we could have, and it must have cost her beyond anything I could imagine. It might even have been worse than what she was protecting us from.