Year of Miracles Read online

  "Not if I kill her," he snarled, and at this, Prometheus rose.

  "She's a witch, brother. Their secrets are hard to find, and even if you eventually find it, the damage will have long been done."

  Epimetheus lashed at him, spitting, snarling, but could reach no farther than his bonds would allow him; Prometheus, who was difficult to hurt anyway, had no reason to flinch. "I think I'll let you stay here a while, my friend. Perhaps it will teach you the value of forethought. How long do you suppose I should be gone?" He glanced skyward, as if the changing moon and stars might tell him, and murmured, "A year or more, I imagine. You are, after all, very impulsive, and I can't think that less time would make any sort of impression. Be well, brother. I'll come back for you after a while."

  He did, long years later when he had found the trick to releasing Epimetheus's bonds. Another witch; it could be nothing less, not where human magic was involved, and that was a thing Epimetheus had never learned. Another witch, and he put away the thought of the price he had paid, the knowledge he had given up in order to secure the witch's services. She broke the bonds Anesidora had cast, and Prometheus sent her away before the last of the magic holding Epimetheus unwound. No one looked on a vampire's true form and lived, though witches were nearly impossible to kill, but still: she did not deserve to die, or to be threatened, for helping them, and so Prometheus sent her away before Epimetheus was free, that she might live a little while longer.

  Perhaps Epimetheus would hunt her as he had hunted others, but that was beyond Prometheus's purview, and not his concern. For his own part, he was prepared to fight when at last the emaciated and enraged vampire was free: fight as the price for his part in Epimetheus's long captivity.

  Instead he stood astonished as Epimetheus dropped to the earth, panting, then rose with rage in his eyes, and turned his back on Prometheus, walking—walking! When he would run before!—silently into the night.

  Centuries passed before Prometheus saw him again, and then he hardly knew the face that had been his brother's. Slight in form: that much had not changed, but what once had been flawless beauty had mutated to plainness, attractive only in motion, and that for the charisma that could not be wholly squelched in fathomless eyes. His scent had not changed, nor the fluidity of his actions, but thoughtfulness sat about him like a cloak now, slowing his behavior, weighing it in a way that Prometheus had never seen before. Indeed, were it not for the scent, Prometheus might not have known him, and as so often was the case when they had been long parted, neither did Epimetheus seem to know him. Prometheus greeted him as he always had: "What name should I call you by?" and was given a look of consideration in exchange.

  "What name would you call me by?"

  Here, perhaps, he made a mistake, for when he offered the name of longest ease, "Epimetheus, and I shall be Prometheus still," a glitter of recognition came into his brother's dark eyes, though it went unremarked beyond, "Epimetheus, then," and then a pause. "There is a woman."

  A smile flashed across Prometheus's features. "Tell me about her."

  Ushas, called Aphrodite, called Hausos, called by many other names, commanded men with nothing more than a smile; men and women too, as her love and beauty knew no bounds. There were those who said she changed her face to suit the one who looked upon her, that she could not be less than perfection, for she reflected what they found most beautiful in their hearts. The brothers thought otherwise, for they saw the same woman, but it was not to her that Prometheus was drawn, but rather to her older copy: her mother, whose white hair was still threaded with brown, and whose eyes and mouth had lines of wisdom and joy written around them. She was beautiful too, brown as the earth, graceful as wind bowing the branches of trees, and with a deeply rooted strength that spoke of things greater than mortal man borne within her. They called her Pandora now, and upon seeing her, Prometheus spoke a single word to Epimetheus: "Don't."

  "I think I must."

  "There are very few musts thrust upon us, being who and what we are, Epimetheus. Don't," Prometheus said again, more softly, more intensely. "It will not end well."

  "I think I must," Epimetheus repeated. "I am compelled from beyond memory, and I think I must." A sly smile showed flat human teeth; before, his teeth had curved, not so sharply as Prometheus's own, perhaps, but they had never before lied about what he was. "Call it impulse, and own that it is mine to embrace, brother."

  Hesitation curled through Prometheus's heart. "You do remember."

  "From time to time." The snarl faded from Epimetheus's lips. "From time to time, and not well. I remember the hot sun on the plains, and the endless quest for a drink in the desert. Lizards," he spat. "Nasty things to taste."

  Prometheus smiled, but said nothing, and Epimetheus went on uninterrupted. "After the desert, hunting. I saw others like me, once in a while. They rushed in, deathly fast; they panicked that which they chased, be it bird or beast or man. It seemed…wasteful. I began to insinuate myself instead, creeping closer until the prey came to me."

  "Be it bird or beast or man," Prometheus said softly, and Epimetheus nodded.

  "They all came to me, and with patience I feasted better than I ever had before. I watched the others of my kind, and saw they had no patience at all, and sometimes…I remembered. How I had once been like them, and how I had changed." A shudder ran through him, more profound than any man could ever sustain. His bones were fluid inside, his face, a dripping mask, before the plainness he had adopted came to steadiness once more. "I prefer not to remember. I believe I was happier then."

  "Yes," Prometheus said, knowing it to be ill-advised, but gambling on the honesty. "Yes. I believe you were. But you were very foolish, brother. Very dangerous. To all of us."

  "Yes." Unusually sibilant, that word, and the silence that grew up around it carried hunger as he watched the distant shadows and shapes that made up Pandora, who had been Anesidora. "I remember her. She has made me, Prometheus. She has made me into what I am. I might have forgotten, or ceased to care, before, but now I see and think too clearly, and for that I want revenge."

  "It's too late for revenge, Epi. We're long since the stories they tell at night to frighten and awe one another. We're part of their subconsciousness now. No revenge will eradicate that."

  "Then let it be justice, instead."

  Prometheus sighed. "The purpose was to teach you forethought, Epimetheus. What good is it if you use that forethought to plot your own doom all over again? I say it again, brother: do not do this."

  "And I say again that I think I must."

  "Then on your head be it." Prometheus transformed, which he had not done in long and long and long again. The wound on his side said as much, scarred tissue never shifted often enough into dragonly mass to heal. In the thunderclap of shaken air, he flung himself skyward, a sinuous red slash against the blue, and a warning for Anesidora and all the world to see. Epimetheus sneered after him, and went among the mortals to stalk his prey.

  He had searched: for centuries and more he had searched for the secret that was her birthright, but witch's secrets were hard to come by. Only the Old Races, or another witch, might live long enough to have been there when a witch was born from the earth, and should one witch betray another, she would surely die for it before a year was out. The wind-borne djinn, and the steadfast gargoyles: they were most likely to catch the birthing of a witch, and know the secret that gave her power. But most likely and always were nothing alike: since his captivity, he had learned the birth-secret of only one witch, and that one was not Anesidora.

  Nor did it need to be, in the end. He could not destroy Anesidora without her progenitive secret, but with another witch captured by hers, he could ensnare the one who had once captured him. She watched for him, did Anesidora: she watched for the beautiful and charming boy he had been, and never looked at all for the plain and considering man he had become, much less for one of her sisters to come calling. He only let himself be seen when the magic was already working: human magic, so raw and rough beside the elegance of the Old Races, and so dangerous to them. She had caught him in her working of earth and water and wood and air; he did not wish to return the favor. Only stone, for the earth she had been made from. Under his witch's command blood turned to marble and ate its way outward, until a block much larger and rougher than he had expected stood where she had been. He was content to leave it there, where man would pull it apart in time, and thus end Anesidora.

  He let his captured witch go, a thing he never would have done before. That was a gift and the curse of forethought: that he could see that he might have use again for a witch he could command, rather than simply indulge in the pleasure of her magic-rich blood. As vengeance went, it lacked, but justice: he rather thought he had meted justice, and that had a certain satisfaction of its own.

  He left Anesidora, a frozen block of stone, and though he would not forget, neither could he foresee, not fully, not wholly, not enough.

  His mother, they said, spat on the earth when she saw she had borne a son, and walked away from the babe, left him mewling on the ground. His father was the man who found him, a soft and gentle-hearted soul, who took the crying child into his home and gave him a life. He was an easy child, quiet, introspective, concerned from his earliest days with beauty, as though it was a puzzle to be unlocked. His manner of unlocking it was to sculpt: bits of soft wood as a child, graduating to mahoganies and oaks as he aged, bringing depth and form from the dark wood until it all but breathed with life.

  A merchant uncle, sensing burgeoning talent, came home from a long journey carrying soapstone as a gift for his nephew, and carried away again the objects of his efforts: horses striding from foam, owls peeking from hollowed branches, bulls whose whitened eyes stared with arrogance at the viewer, all to be sold at generous prices. Some portion of that he returned to his nephew, along with more stone, which seemed his natural element, with a grace and finery unmatched in his woodwork. The boy worked, a stripling to a youth to a man, and in his manhood was much sought after for his art, and, as his wealth grew, for his prospects as a husband.

  But no woman pleased him; this he publicly attributed to the sight of so many wanton females in the streets of the city. Privately, he conducted his affairs with other men discretely until the day came a beauty said to be the goddess Aphrodite herself brought him a block of stone, and bade him carve a woman from its depths. For this, she said, anyone his heart desired might be his, and no man would tell him differently.

  He sat with the stone for a week; a month; a year. He learned its textures, its colors, its strengths, and when he knew it well enough he began to carve. A sculptor might say that the image lay within the piece already; that all he did was remove the pieces that did not belong, but he felt it more strongly with his lady of stone than he ever had before. Long before she was complete, he gave her a name: Elise, who was sworn to the gods, and he whispered to her the truths about who he desired, and how even a goddess could not give him what he wanted. She became his companion as she emerged from the stone, until the beauty he had been consigned to create took on a more human cast. She smirked, did Elise, a fulsome smile of fond amusement curling her lips, and the gesturing hand she offered was playfully inviting. There were elements of perfection expected in a master sculptor's work, homages to the current fashion of comeliness, and yet he could not bring himself to condemn his masterpiece to the slim athletic lines that more recalled a man's body than a woman's. She came from the marble plump and strong, powerful as a discus thrower, confident of herself. He showed her to no one as he worked, knowing she would shock with her strength, and afraid that, should Aphrodite hear how he did not honor her, but found another woman in the stone to reveal instead, she would refuse his payment, and he knew now what that payment must be.

  For a month, and then three, Elise stood in his work space when she was done, for he could not bear to be parted from the friend he had brought forth from marble. He went to her in the mornings and told her of the world beyond his door, of his friends, of his family, of his lovers, and he bid her good night each evening when he left, happy to go on forever in such a way.

  But it could not be: Aphrodite came to him in time, and asked—asked, did not demand—to see the sculpture. Heart in palpitations, he led her to Elise and cowered in a corner, expecting each breath to be his last as she saw what he had made of the marble. Round and round Elise she went, examining her for flaws, frowning in thought, murmuring beneath her breath, until finally she turned to him with a smile that blossomed as if from the heart of the earth itself, and said, "I knew I had chosen well with you. Name your heart's desire and it will be yours."

  "She is." Simple words that sent him quaking through and through. "She has become my friend, mistress; she has become my closest companion. Only let her be mine, and I will ask nothing more of you at all."

  Curiosity lit Aphrodite's eyes. Curiosity, and sorrow, and she murmured, "That may be the one boon I cannot grant, Master Sculptor. That choice is hers, not mine, but here: you have brought her from the stone she was captured in, which was a thing I could not do. Had I tried, she might have shattered and been lost to the world, and with her my heart and so too all the hope of mankind. Let me do what I am made to do, child of the blood that captured her, child of the earth that bore her." She turned then to Elise, and reached forth to grasp the statue's welcoming hand as a daughter might capture her mother's.

  He knew magic, of course; any artist did. But what he knew, and what transpired betwixt goddess and statue, ran deeper than any magic he had ever touched. Color suffused Elise's hand at Aphrodite's touch: earthy brown, darker than the goddess. It swept Elise, life's blood flowing beneath marble's surface, until her palms and lips pinkened, until her thick hair softened into its myriad curls, until the smirk on her lips blossomed into a full smile, until she stepped free from her marble base a living thing to embrace the joyful goddess beside her.

  He fell to his knees: of course he did, being no fool. He heard Aphrodite, now proven a goddess without question, murmur a name to his Elise: Mother, and knew he knelt before the daughter of Titans. He bowed forward, put his forehead to the ground, and only prayed that he might not be smote for looking on them both.

  Elise's touch was warm and familiar in his hair, and her voice the rich laughing thing he had imagined. "Stop; stop that. Have we not become friends, these months and years as you've unbound me from the stone? Come, rise, be my friend still. Be my daughter's friend as well, and fear nothing from us."

  "Gods are not so kind," he whispered, and would not look up.

  He heard the smile on her lips, heard wryness in her answer: "Then perhaps I am only a witch, and not a goddess after all. Please," she said, more softly. "My gaze has been fixed all the while we have been together. Let me at least look on you, my sweet friend."

  In the end, he could refuse her nothing, and lifted first his eyes and then all of himself, to sit back on his heels and look up at what he had, and had not, wrought. Goddess or not, she was made to be worshiped, all lush heaviness and sensual power. Were she any other she would make him uncomfortable, with her closeness, with her nakedness, with her confidence. He knew her too well to be disturbed by those things, yet wondered that he could even bring them to light, when all he knew of what most men wanted was what the world admired as fashionable beauty that she did not reflect. "You were in the stone," he said uncertainly. "Not in the way that sculptures are, but caught there. By magic?"

  "By magic." Elise knelt to be with him, and at eye level she was less overwhelming, if for no other reason than he no longer gazed up at her like a supplicant. Her eyes were distant, as if she called a faded memory into place. "There will be a reckoning for that magic, in time, but Ushas promised you a gift, one within my power to grant. I'll stay, if you wish it. Your friend and companion, for releasing me from the stone. I'll ask nothing of you that you don't wish to give, nor take offense when you find love elsewhere. I'll watch you sculpt, if you'll allow it, and care for you when you are sick and old."

  "Why?"

  "Because no one else could have freed me, and human lives are not, in the end, so very long. I can stay a while, without regrets."

  "Mother," said Aphrodite, whom Elise called Ushas, and Elise shrugged one beautiful round shoulder.

  "You think of me as flighty, daughter. As drawn from one shining moment to the next with no thought for what I've left behind. I am. I was. But I've been in the stone a very long time, my child, and stone is nothing but patient. Human lives are not so very long," she said again. "Revenge can wait."

  "Stay," he blurted, and flushed as Elise smiled at him. "As long as you want to," he bargained. "For the rest of my life, if you wish it, but only a day if that's what your heart prefers. Come back if you can." His own heart was full, an ache that rolled through him slowly. "Come back if you want. But only stay if you desire it, Elise. Friends…do not hold each other back when they need to go, and I have never had a closer friend than you."

  Aphrodite swore in a way that goddesses of love surely were not meant to, and stomped off to the sounds of her mother's laughter. Elise stayed, for days; months; years, until the morning came that he awakened beside the man who had been his lover for a full year that day, and recalled the memory of Elise's kisses on his cheeks sometime in the night, and the whisper she had left him with: You will be remembered. Past history, past legend, into myth: you will be remembered as the sculptor who brought stone to life. I will see that it is so. Live well, and be happy, my sweet Pygmalion.

  She wore a feathered cloak, and walked with the jar balanced atop the braids on her head, always swaying to keep it steady. Demons lay within the jar; she knew, because she had put them there. Demons of speed and fire, of stone and air, of water and sky and wings. Hope, too: hope had come forth from the jar, and now wandered the world seeking a vengeance that she herself no longer desired. Instead she had painted the jar with the demons' likenesses, to hold them in place, and she had painted a creature with wings around its neck to represent the daughter who had left her in the name of revenge. Then she had stoppered it with wax and straw and string, and carried it until she no longer knew why, then carried it longer still. She left behind what she was and what she had been as she walked; she had never been a being meant for contemplation, and the world was warm and bright and inviting. She walked until she was weary, and walked on still; she walked as though she searched for something, trusting she would know it when she found it.