The Ale Boy's Feast Read Online Free PDF Page B

of sensation between touch, taste, sight, scent, and sound.
Like you, we grew in the Expanse. Our shells shattered, as they all do. We consented to be carried home and restored in an uncorrupted form
.
    “Mother.” The word escapes him even before he knows what he’s saying.
    I’m here too, son
, comes a voice from the circle. His father? He reaches for their names and for his own.
    We were sent to find you
, says his mother.
Your sufferings are over. No more fear. Only mercy
.
    “You unstitched me. Just as you unstitched Auralia.”
    We untied cords that bound you in a broken shell. Don’t be afraid. On the mountain we’ll take you to the garden, where you’ll be refashioned. Your body will grow back from your spirit. And you won’t suffer any poisons from the Expanse. You’ll be free in the light to move from here to there, from past to present. Free to witness so many amazing things. And we’ll be together
.
    “What do you mean—my ‘broken shell’?”
    Think of a soldier casting off battered armor after a war
.
    “I was a soldier’s son.” He looks to the radiant figure of his father. “I was an errand-runner. I did simple things.”
    You were an ale boy. And more. From long before that, you were extravagant
.
    He remembers it now. Their gloved fingers passed through him to loosen threads. As he floated among the river weeds, he felt a pain like a needle in his head. But the knot it touched would not unravel. Another at his center held.
    You’re a stubborn one
. Her thoughtspeech feels like laughter.
But you’ll let go in time
. She gestures to the kite strings that run back into the dark.
You’ll feel such relief when you do
.
    “How is it I can see you? I have no eyes.”
    The borders of your senses have blurred. Knowing is easier now, and you’ll remember so much. Beyond your time in the Expanse
.
    With her hand on his veil, he feels her memories fill him up. He begins to understand. These witnesses have come to this place, this time, like birds through air, like fish through water, coursing through the fullness.
    The only thing better for swimming than water is light
, they like to say.
    He remembers now what they mean. Maybe that’s why he loved to float on a raft across Deep Lake under the stars, why he held his breath while swallows weaved in the air over the water, why he thrilled to run through House Abascar’s corridors. These pleasures remind him of how he first flew, how he’ll fly again.
    Among his mother’s memories, he learns how these Northchildren came for him. They drifted like snowflakes between innumerable stars. The stars are bells, resonant with sound. The bells are made of cords, tightly woven, lines that swirl and tangle and rush like ocean currents. The cords are made of threads, twisted and braided. The threads are other histories, other worlds.
    As the Northchildren slid between the threads, the edges of their wings brushed against them, and the sound the bells made was gratitude. A song. Drawn by the gravity of a particular thread, like leaves drawn into a rushing stream, the Northchildren tumbled suddenly into a waterfall, long and cascading,which delivered them into an underground river, the same water that runs beside him now.
    But the Northchildren did not stay. They rose up through a break in the ceiling, emerging from the mouth of a well, where blue flowers bloomed between the stones. This was the Expanse, a place of peril and poison. But they were safe from such corruption, swaddled in their shrouds.
    They ran, feeling the world’s rough textures against their feet. Colors—the hot white of the mountain peaks, the lush greens of the Cragavar forest, the gleaming emerald of Deep Lake, the rust-colored dust and coal black rocks of the high southern plains.
    They gathered in a glen. One placed a candle at the heart of their quiet circle. In its luminous bloom, they shared stories of what they had seen. They spoke of events they hoped to witness in this world’s