Antheia Botanis's Arc

Chapter 10 of 15

The twins grew faster than any child should. By the end of the first month they crawled. By the third they walked. By the sixth they ran the terraces of the mountaintop garden barefoot, and the grass bent up behind them where their feet had pressed it flat. Antheia counted seasons on one hand. Uncle stayed on the temple step and watched. Roswell kept the roots of the pomegranate at the center trimmed back so the tree would not swallow the paths. She named the girl Iant and the boy Coro. The vine marks on their backs did not fade. They deepened. Antheia checked them each bath, one against the other, and saw the mirror hold. Both marks lived. Both children fed the fields for a day's walk. The foxes with jasmine at their throats followed them room to room and slept across their doorways at night. On the morning of the first true summer, Antheia found Coro under the pomegranate with his hands full of fruit and blossom together. He laughed and gave her a split pomegranate. The juice ran red down her wrist. She looked for Iant and did not see her. She found the girl in the lower row of the garden, kneeling by a bed of white anemones. The flowers under Iant's hands were black. Not dying. Black the way the sacred groves had gone black. Iant looked up. Her eyes were clear. She had not cried. She lifted a handful of the black petals and let them fall. "They came when I asked," she said. Antheia knelt. She touched one petal. It held. It did not spread. The girl had called the rot and stopped it at the bed's edge. Verdis was already at the gate. Antheia had not sent for them. Verdis crossed the path in three steps and stood over the black bed and did not kneel. They looked at Iant a long time. Then at Antheia. "There it is," Verdis said. "The other half." Antheia stood. "She is a child." "She is the heir," Verdis said. "Mine, not yours. The table stands." Verdis reached into a fold of their sash and set a piece of amber honeycomb on the ground beside the black flowers. Light and dark. Balanced. "The dome holds through her," Verdis said. "Not through you." Antheia understood then what she had made. Two children. One green. One black. The balance she and Verdis had built on the pedestal now walked on two small pairs of feet, and one of those pairs would answer to Verdis, not to her. The garden would live. The groves would keep healing. But the seat had split. She lifted Iant onto her hip. The girl put her black-stained hand against Antheia's neck. Coro ran up with the pomegranate. Antheia held both children and did not look at Verdis again. "Then she learns from both of us," she said. Verdis nodded once and left through the gate.