Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Immediately, I know this is true. This is why we have heart spark.
“To what end, though? What does it matter?”
Suddenly, Haryet’s shape begins to shimmer. The glowing blue spark that outlines her body fills in, hiding both her cherry spark in her head and her heart spark in her chest. A pattern appears. A dress. A long, blue gown made of silks, and linens, and lace.
I recognize it as the one she wore for the Final Choosing during our Little Sister year. When she became Number Eight and I became Number Nine. And when I look down at myself, I’m wearing my Final Choosing dress too.
“What?” I ask, a little bit excited, but also scared. Because I don’t understand what’s happening. Will I be tugged back in time? Saving me from whatever ripped me away from Tyse and the Spark Source, but also putting me back to where I started, and thereby taking everything I’ve earned, back? Will I love the man I love… again?
But no. That’s not what’s happening.
Haryet is doing her trick. Her Spark trick. Her final act, in the final Choosing, which was to weave it.
The pointer finger of Haryet’s right hand is raised in the air and out of her fingertip comes… thread. She turned her spark into spools of glowing thread that night. Her entire dress was made of spark and no one knew until she lit up like a star on the stage and unraveled it.
It was quite a trick. And… I get it, it’s beautiful, but what does it mean?
I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me. What is she doing? I mean, dressmaking? It reminds me of Jasina Bell and her butterflies.
Wait—my heart pounds.
I hold up my pointer finger and draw a doodle in the air. The doodle glows, staying in place. Hangs there like art hung on a wall. Something very boring and simple, but it was special in its own way because I made it.
And then, in my mind’s eye, I see Jasina Bell turning her embroidered dress embellishments into spark butterflies.
Spark thread into spark dresses.
Spark doodles into art.
For some reason, I find this funny. Because… wow. What a sad, sad little talent I had! Hearts and flowers. That’s my claim to fame.
Regardless, I think I understand now. I think I know what spark does. I know what makes Haryet and I different. And why we have the heart sparks.
Spark is creation.
Haryet and I weren’t harvested for spark, we collected it inside ourselves over decades. And then, during the Choosings, we used it to make things. Stupid things, maybe, but things nonetheless. And after… we walked through the God’s Tower doors, passing into another dimension.
And it was this passing through dimensions that warranted… a tag. Something that identified us as being from Tau City.
It’s gross—it marks us like cattle, makes us a product.
But this marking, it wasn’t for the men or gods of the upper dimension cities.
It was for… the Source.
Something that would follow us.
A shard broken from the crystals in the cave.
And as soon as I think this word ‘shard’, the final answer slips into place.
The heart spark is a shard. A piece of the Source, but also here because we left our dimension and wandered into another one. And, I guess, that’s just not how it works.
If you come from the Source, you are part of the Source.
Forever.
Someone keeps tabs on us. And while my guess might be wrong—perhaps it was Stayn keeping tabs on us?
But it doesn’t fit.
Because Stayn doesn’t belong here, in the seascape that holds the souls of the sacrificed.
Only spark does.
And only women were harvested for it.
My gaze wanders to where the Godships were, but aren’t there now. These others—all the other girls and women who came to me, begging to be seen—they are gone now. Lost. Remnants in the truest sense of the word.
They have no heart spark because they didn’t cross dimensions until they died, and had no spark when they died because the gods took it from them in the harvest.
And now, I really do get it.
I look down at my empty, black body. It’s lit up with their names. Oh, I lament, I so hope I can find my way back to Tyse. He’s dying to know what these symbols mean and I can’t wait to tell him.
These symbols mean something else, though too. It’s not just a memory, it feels like… a promise?
I’m not sure. But meeting all these harvested women and girls feels like an exchange. Not just so they would be remembered, but so that they would be tagged. So that I could keep track of them
Wow, I exhale. While I am flattered to be thought of so highly that I would be trusted with the memory and magic of billions of women, it also feels like a burden.