She worked quickly but gently, pausing now and then as he shifted restlessly and mumbled incoherent sentences. Revida tore a strip off her already threadbare skirt, wet it and cleansed his face. She gasped and almost dropped the cloth at the sight of his washed features.
She knew this face, had seen it in her dreams every night for a quarter of a century; had traced its contours from eyebrow to jawline. His eyes were different—dark brown in her dreams instead of the liquid silver that had gazed at her earlier.
When he’d awakened at her command, his voice had been hoarse—as gritty as the dust shrouding him from head to toe—unlike the deep, dulcet tones that seduced her in her sleep and bound her tears behind her eyes so long ago.
“Priestess, why do you weep?”
Revida stared at the shimmering image haloed in cerulean light. “Nirari no longer speaks to this handmaiden.”
She sensed his anguish, far greater than her own, though his words cast down her grief. “Save your tears. They are all that’s left of Nirari.”
***
She managed to sleep that night despite the cold and the sudden surfeit of company. She dreamed as well. The lover in those dreams looked much as the man she’d coaxed into the cave—dark hair, handsome face. And something else her eyes couldn’t see but her soul sensed—a vast power beyond human understanding, a timelessness that saw future, past and present.
He’d first appeared to her when she was a young woman grieving over the silence of the goddess she served. Revida had been a water diviner since she was younger than Derketo and a rain priestess after her first blooding. All her life she’d felt the presence of Nirari, the rain goddess. Her whispers filled Revida’s spirit; her blessing of life-giving rain watered the crops and topped the wells.
Then one day a storm, unlike any had ever witnessed, surged out of the south. The clouds were blacker than the sap pitch the village men boiled to keep off the biting flies. The clouds would have turned the day to night except for the lightning that struck the earth. The winds tore the roofs off houses and snapped tree limbs like kindling. The rain fell in torrents for eleven days, bursting rivers over their banks, washing some villages away and burying others under rapids of mud.
Where Revida had once prayed to Nirari for rain, she prayed for it to stop. It did. Everything halted except the lightning. The clouds vanished, the winds died and the rain didn’t fall. At first grateful for a surcease of the rain, Revida’s traumatized village praised her efforts. Two years later they chased her into the wilderness, pelting her with stones as she ran. She had prayed too hard, too well. The rain had stopped and never returned.
Her dream lover had appeared that first night she spent in a forest, huddled under a mound of leaves for warmth. Revida had cried herself to sleep. It was the last time she’d weep.
He’d come to her most nights since then, often her sole companion as the years, with its many hardships and few joys, passed. She’d married a man from a village who knew nothing of her life as a rain priestess and bore him a child. She lost both—one to war, the other to illness. She had mourned them—still mourned them—but she had not wept, not even in her dreams when her lover held and comforted her.
In this dream, he stroked her hair, still dark and lush—unlike the dry, iron-gray it was in the waking world.
“Brave woman,” he said. “You saved my children.”
Sometimes it was difficult to swallow the resentment. “Then you are in my debt,” she said. “You didn’t save mine.”
His eyes darkened even more, and his hands swept her back. “I can create life, Revida, but it’s beyond my power to return it once it’s taken. There is another far greater than I who can do so, and her will is unknown even to us.”
“I’m afraid,” she said and leaned her forehead against his chest.
He buried his hands in her hair and kissed the top of her head. “Don’t be. I’m with you, as I’ve always been.”
The dream faded, and Revida awakened to the murmur of voices. She rolled over, ignoring the ache in her bones. Ninun and Derketo sat on either side of their father. He was sitting up, the blanket pooled in his lap. Except for his eyes, he was the image in her dream. Revida thought herself too old to blush, but heat crawled into her cheeks. She was no longer the youthful woman in her dreams, but an aging crone, homeless and nomadic.
A shot of anger burned away the last bit of somnolence weighting her eyelids. Her succor through long years of exile had been dreams of the lightning god Atagartis. He had come to her in her dreams, their mutual grief over the destruction of the goddess she served and the wife he loved bringing them together. That sorrow had become something more in those dreams, and Revida held fast to them as she aged and the world gasped for water. What trickster demon had entered her thoughts and defiled them by putting the face of the god she loved onto a stranger?
Ninun was speaking to his father. “Derketo says there’s water under the cave. The priestess sensed it as well.”
The man nodded, his features grim. “Have your sister lead you to it and hurry. We don’t have much time.”
Appalled, Revida sat up abruptly. “You can’t send them alone!”
He gazed at her, no surprise at her wakefulness in his expression. “Why not?”
She scowled. Men. “Because they’re children. We don’t know what danger might be down there.” She lurched to her feet, cold, grimy and unhappy to start her morning like this. “I’m going with them.” The water skins needed refilling anyway, and she looked forward to a scrubbing if there was enough water to spare.
His mouth curved upward, a reflection of the smile she remembered from her dreams. She bristled, indignant. “They’ll be fine. Trust me.”
She snorted. “Trust you? I don’t even know your name.”
The smile faded, and his gaze intensified, making her look away from him. “You know me, Revida.”
Revida backed away from him, unwilling to accept what her spirit whispered inside her. She had asked the children their names but withheld hers. They couldn’t have told him her name. A shiver snaked its way up her spine. “I’ll go with your children. You’ll be fine. We won’t be gone long.”
He remained silent, but she felt his gaze heavy on her back as she fashioned a makeshift torch and led Ninun and Derketo further into the cave’s depths. They scampered ahead, disappearing into the gloom. “Slow down,” she called to them. “You’ll get lost, and I’ll never find you.”
Her torch wouldn’t last long, but the scent of water was heavy in her nostrils, its presence a high hum in her ears. It was close, and she’d made note of the few turns they’d taken so far so they could backtrack in the dark. She caught a glimpse of Ninun’s face, pale in the wavering torchlight, before he turned a corner and disappeared.
Revida cursed under her breath and sped up to catch him. She entered an expansive cavern with a high ceiling from which stone in the shape of fangs hung and trickled water. More of the stone teeth erupted from the floor, and she had the unnerving sensation of standing in a giant’s mouth, waiting for its jaws to snap shut.
Movement flitted in the corner of her eye, and she caught Derketo skipping amongst the rock teeth toward a pool of precious water. She didn’t stop at its shores, and Revida cried out too late to Ninun. “Stop her!”
The girl plunged into the water and sank. Revida cursed and sprinted toward the pool. Ninun’s powerful grip on her arm lifted her off her feet and yanked her back.
“Wait,” he said, and Revida gawked at him, the air whistling through her nose as she gasped in shock.
The boy stared at her with changed eyes. They’d turned the same translucent blue as his father’s, and his hold on her was far stronger than any child’s. He indicated the pool with a thrust of his chin. “Watch,” he instructed.
The pool bubbled, sending ripples toward its shore. A fish, scaled in shades of blue, indigo and scarlet, leapt out of the water , arced and dove again. A girl’s laughter echoed in the undergro
und chamber followed by a voice wreathed in giggles. “See, priestess? I can swim!”
Revida exhaled, stunned. “Blessed mother of storms.” She turned her gaze to Ninun who released her. “You aren’t human children, are you?
He watched her with an expression as ancient as his face was young. “No. We’re older than all the generations who worshipped us. But we are children—Nirari’s children. And Atagartis’s.”
Revida’s knees buckled. She would have fallen had Ninun not caught her. The torch slipped from her hand and guttered at her feet. The chamber remained lit by the glow emanating from the pool and the brightly-colored fish that still cavorted in its depths.
“You are the keeper of whirlwinds and zephyrs,” she said.
Ninun pressed a finger to her lips. “Shhh, priestess.” He winked. “I remember you well. You’d sing when you prayed to my mother.”
Revida wondered if she’d ever catch enough breath in her lungs again or if her heart would ever slow its mad beat. “Not blasphemous names then. Your sister is the fish goddess. And the man—your father: truly that cannot be the lightning god I dragged into a cave?”
Ninun shrugged. “He is.”
Her thoughts reeled. “I don’t understand...”
The voice of her dream lover spoke from the forest of stone teeth behind her. He leaned against one of the pointed columns, as ragged and unkempt as when she left him but with a cerulean aura dancing around his body. “My brother Sumarimis wrecked the world with his jealousy. I and mine need you, Revida. Will you help us?”
***
She stood hip deep in the pool with the lightning god. Ninun had left and taken Derketo—returned to human form—with him. They waited above, waited to be freed by their father’s crippled power and a human woman’s uncertain aid.
In any other scenario, she would be nothing more than a burnt corpse, roasted by the lethal marriage of water and lightning. But she lived and breathed and faced the creator god whom she’d comforted and then loved in her dreams.
Atagartis traced the length of her arm with one finger. “You are lovely, Revida.”
She turned her face away, mortified, and stared into the shadows cast by the pool’s glow. “Please don’t,” she said. “I’m old—weathered as hard as a sun-cured hide.” She managed a small smile and a quick glance at him. “Were you truly human, you’d be young enough to be my son, maybe even my grandson.”
She held still as he stroked her coarse hair. “I’ve searched the world for you, Revida. The woman I see before me is the same one I see in my dreams.”
Revida shivered, awestruck and confused by his affections—and his words. “Why were you looking for me?”
Fear closed her throat as Atagartis’s features darkened and blue sparks danced in his eyes. His touch remained gentle on her body. “In his jealousy, Sumarimis destroyed our wife. Nirari loved him as much as she loved me, but it wasn’t enough for him. When she refused to abandon me and cleave solely to him, he became enraged. If Nirari wouldn’t have him alone, no one would have her.”
The great storm with its punishing winds, fierce lightning, and drowning rain—a battle between gods and all for the affections of a goddess. She’d felt Nirari’s death all the way to her soul. Revida hadn’t known then what had brought about the sudden emptiness that filled her, only that she’d wanted to scream her agony to the stars. She had cried until she grew sick and then cried in her dreams until Atagartis sought her there and bid her weep no more.
“It’s been more than twenty years since the rain fell,” she said. “The crops withered and the livestock died. Men spilled blood over the control of streams more mud than water. The world dies because of a lover’s quarrel.”
She didn’t bother to hide her resentment, her bitterness. Atagartis might strike her down for her impertinence, but he would know what chaos he and his brother had brought on all who dwelt on this parched earth.
Atagartis didn’t smite her; he did embrace her, his wet hands caressing her back. “We’re trying to save the world, Revida,” he whispered in her ear.
“As an injured man with two small children?”
His low chuckle tickled her neck. “Not quite.” He stepped away from her but held her hands in his. “Sumarimis found a way to imprison us as humans. We don’t age, and we don’t grow ill, but we have many of your weaknesses and almost none of our power.
“We’ve been able to hide from my brother for many years. Cloaked in spells, hidden by sorcery, always searching for you. We’ve found you, so we don’t have to hide anymore.”
Revida frowned. “I’m willing to offer any aid, but I’m an old woman. What could I possibly do to help flesh-bound gods escape one of man’s own creators?”
Sorrow swirled black clouds in Atagartis’s eyes. “Remember when I told you to save your tears? They are all that’s left of Nirari—a thread of essence she bestowed on her most powerful priestess before Sumarimis destroyed her. Would you weep for me, Revida? Give up the tears you’ve held inside you for so long?”
She shook her head, confused by what he asked of her. “Of course, but I still don’t understand.”
Atagartis closed his eyes for a moment. “You’ll see. Trust me.”
He touched her forehead lightly. “Weep, priestess. You’ve carried this burden long enough.”
***
Her grief tore her apart, turned her inside out. Images flashed behind her eyes. Revida saw herself fleeing the village in which she was born, a pariah to those who once valued her connection to the goddess, then threatened to kill her when that connection was severed. She watched herself bury her husband’s broken body, her small son’s—ravaged by fever. She’d done these things dry-eyed and grim and become a lonely nomad, growing old in exile. She had consigned herself to a fate in which she’d die alone, desiccated to dust or her bones picked cleaned by starving scavengers. And she had not wept.
Until now.
Atagartis held her as she sobbed, tears flooding her eyes and sliding down her cheeks to drip on the god’s shoulder and into the pool. Revida cried until her head pounded, and her eyes swelled almost shut. She hung limply in Atagartis’s arms, emptied of the sorrow that had hung so long over her spirit like a crow over a corpse. A dull numbness replaced the anguish, and she might have stayed in Atagartis’s embrace forever.
He cupped her face in his hands and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “You have saved us, Revida.”
She opened her swollen eyes and gasped. The entire chamber was lit brighter than a courtyard under a noon sun. The god she knew from her dreams, entrapped in a human body, had transformed. He still wore traces of humanity—a thin cladding through which a celestial radiance blazed and crackled.
Though she felt no painful shocks, the pool’s surface sizzled as tiny bolts of lightning danced across the surface. She gazed at Atagartis pulsing with light. “What’s happening?”
His voice was different, as if he spoke with many voices—none his. All his. “Nirari bound the last of herself in your tears, Revida. You were her favorite priestess. I couldn’t allow you to weep, not yet. I locked those tears inside you before Sumarimis imprisoned me.”
“You searched for me all these years to unlock them again and free yourself.” He had used her.
A return to godliness must have restored many powers, including hearing others’ thoughts. “I didn’t use you,” he said. “You were my comfort when Nirari died. I hope I was yours when your husband and child died.”
She couldn’t deny that one. Those dreams had seen her through the years of wretched mourning.
A low rumble vibrated the ground, distracting her from rebuking him more. “What is that?”
Lightning shot from Atagartis’s fingers and ricocheted off the walls before dissipating. His wide grin was feral and triumphant. “That, my priestess, is the call to battle. My brother is here.” With that, the chamber flashed with a blinding radiance.
Revida covered her eyes with her hands. When she cou
ld see again, she stood alone in the still-illuminated water. The rumbling had swelled to a roar, and even here, in earth’s deeper sanctuary, she heard inhuman howls of rage. She slogged her way across the pool as fast as her shaking legs could carry her. Gods warred with each other; she refused to cower in here, wringing her hands.
***
Had she surviving children, hers would have been a tale to pass down the generations. Revida stood at the cave entrance alone and watched the spectacle before her with her heart jumping in her chest and her throat closed in terror.
Twenty-five years earlier, the rain stopped falling. The lightning faded and the winds ceased. Revida had not lived near the sea, but rumors had spread inland—of dead calm waters and fish that disappeared into the great deep and avoided fishermen’s nets.
She didn’t know what might be happening to the seas at the moment, but the skies above the plains had gone black, painting out the sun. Whirlwinds spun out of the miasma of shadows, spinning across the landscape and ripping up soil and scrub brush. Lightning raked across the dry storm, flashed inside the twisting winds and illuminated the same two silhouettes she’d seen as Ninun and Derketo fled before the wrath of Sumarimis, the Bitter Dark.
Within the cauldron of shadows, the god-brothers fought for hours, until finally a great cracking sounded above Revida, and the earth heaved beneath her in response. Lightning flashed until she had to cover her eyes. Silence, deep as night, descended, followed by a sound Revida thought she’d never hear again in her lifetime—the patter of raindrops striking ground.
She opened her eyes. The sun remained obscured, but this time behind gray clouds swollen with rain. The sky wept, as Revida had wept in the pool. Rain fell harder and harder until she could no longer make out the horizon.
Revida began to laugh and cry at the same time. She ran from the cave’s sheltered entrance and was instantly drenched. Water sloughed off her hair and sodden clothes. It poured into her mouth and trickled into her ears. Heedless of the mud caking her shoes, she spun in a circle, threw back her head and screamed Nirari’s name.