The Weight of the World on Her Shoulders Read online

she let the torrent of Second Realmstuff flow down her arm, balanced it precariously on her fingers. Her injured knuckle stung for a moment, but with a thought she twisted it into the right place.

  The pain that flooded through came balanced by the white-cold outrage of the First Realmstuff around her. Fingers of her free hand dancing, she wove it in to balance. She brought her hands together, still not quite understanding - as if anyone could - what she was doing.

  Wild Power blossomed, bright and strong in her grip. Her view flattened out, layer on layer of transparent impressions absorbed without the benefit of a spatial frame of reference. Water a white wall, the Abyss black around it. Faint hints of colour from the scattered, inadequate lighting. The Realmlessness a sickening, sucking void far below.

  She reached out to grab the sides of the Abyss, to relieve the pressure on Keshnu's stitching, and realised she didn't know how to. Her hands were occupied; how was she going to hold anything without hands?

  No, that was stupid. She was so far beyond any logic that required hands for holding things. But what was she trying to get hold of? How was the Abyss splitting? Dora spread her mind out as far as she could, stretching to feel the vast scale of the forces slowly sliding out of balance in front of her.

  The layered image held in her brain shrank, new areas rushing in at the sides as her awareness expanded. Her mind flowed with the wind across the surface of the troubled ocean, leapt up to the distended blue dome of the sky. She swooped low over fields and forests for hundred of miles northwards, and climbed to the West over the knife-sharp peaks of the Tuani Mountains. Somewhere down there was the Sherim where she'd discovered the extent of her powers. She could feel it, sort of, but not see it; even in its broad clearing, it would be too small to make out from this height.

  Pushing South into the tranquil lowlands, she found the sour note she sought. Everything seemed ever-so-slightly off from the right angle. Dora pulled back and back again, the sky fading from blue to black behind her, until the First Realm laid itself out below. It took some squinting of her mind's eye, but she finally made out the line of the crease, running West from Vessit and along the northern edge of the Tuani.

  Almost, she thought, it seemed as if the Abyss must have been there before the mountains, so naturally did it follow the line of the terrain. The fold ran all the way to the far side of the Realm, where First Realmspace itself twisted in half a dozen different directions, impassable to humans. The whole picture reminded her of a crumpled ball of paper. If she could just reach out far enough to grab the edges...

  A lingering filament of logic reminded her you're thinking about reaching for the edges of the universe. But how else to straighten out the Abyss? The northern half of the First Realm was pinned tight by a dozen Sherim, while the southern part twisted up from the eastern corner because of the hard ridge of a crease beneath it.

  Dora managed not to think of how crazy the idea was that she could shift the quarter-million square miles of either half on her own. Pressing down on either end would do no good; the ends were more strongly anchored than anything in the middle, and she might only make it worse. The Realm was like a table, supported by stout legs at both ends but cracking in between. What it needed was a new leg in the middle.

  She let herself fall back to her body, buried in the dark by the Abyss. The air around her still buzzed with the non-verbal worries of a dozen Wildren. Out by the cascade, she could feel Keshnu weakening. How long had she taken to work out what to do? Too long, probably. Everything seemed to take too long to figure out these days.

  Concentration answered her frustration, banishing the distractions to the back of her mind where they couldn't hurt anyone. She reached down into the Abyss, skin crawling as tendrils of the Realmlessness stroked the lowest edge of her awareness. Somehow, she found purchase on the water-slicked stone, careful to grip both sides, not just one.

  It took her a moment to re-engage with the Wild Power still held steady in her hands. In perfect balance, the open Sherim was almost undetectable, the only clue to its existence the heavy-air sense of an impending storm. Gently, Dora slipped one finger ever-so-slightly out of place, traced the resulting leak down and seized everything she found at the bottom.

  Every nerve in her body came to blazing life. The sensation was not one of pain. Tension wracked through her in waves, heating her from heart to fingertips, toes to head. An ache of pressure took hold in her gut, and her breath came in clouds of condensed gold, tighter and shorter every time she inhaled. When she opened her eyes again, she could feel the tears evaporating from her cheeks, shimmering from within.

  The release as she shoved upward with the power blazing through her was ecstatic. She screamed for joy, head thrown back, the firework-blaze of the sound ringing past the noise of the waterfall, momentarily throwing the descending sea back up the way it had come.

  The rock of the Abyss walls absorbed everything she threw at it. Had it even trembled? Dora gasped a breath, wrung-out. Her arms ached, and something in her belly felt wrenched out of place. Something pressed at the back of her skull. Her eyes were streaming again.

  She gritted her teeth, the sense of Keshnu's slow, careful, laborious progress still lodged at the centre of her mind. Somehow, he'd managed to keep going. She couldn't let him down. Her Sherim waited, held in place by hands that apparently had their own instincts for self-preservation. She shivered in anticipation, at once hungry and sickened for the unworldly heat of the power that would flow through her.

  Dora's sense of self-revulsion restored her caution. Anything so overwhelming could be dangerous, and to feel such pleasure at so desperate a time seemed... unclean. Steadily, slowly, she filled herself with power again, letting it flood and fill out her digits one by one, then her limbs. She felt as if she were a waterskin, inflating as it refilled, bulging out in places, crinkling in others. She stretched out, worked the kinks out of her arms and legs.

  Her scalp prickled as she bloated towards capacity, dragging out the seconds until she exhaled honey and amber again. Still, she held herself on the brink of release. A layer of fire blossomed under her skin at the waiting, so close to rapture it was painful. Her single violent outburst had produced no results. Delicacy would be key. She forced herself not to acknowledge it would also prolong the pleasure.

  Gently, she loosened her grip, shaping and directing the flood so it flowed into the crags of the Abyss walls, along the intangible lines with which she'd tethered them to her mind. Even with her eyes squeezed tightly shut against tears she could not completely hold, she could feel the stressed rocks beginning to glow.

  Hands held in careful balance, she drew on the Sherim again, slacked her grip yet further. She became a conduit for the endless stream of Wild Power. So long as she held the Sherim in balance, the clash between logics would create power from nothing. All she had to do was stay firm. She opened herself yet further and let fire roar through her.

  Distantly, she heard herself moan, the sound knitting together with the flow, bearing her out and up towards the indefinable point at which her lifting aimed. The concerns of the Wildren around her fell away, and she rose with the force of a turning season into the rock. The weight settled about her shoulders - where else? - but it was a burden she had refigured herself specifically to bear. With Wild Power filling her, the world became no more than a mantle; a weight to be worn, not borne.

  There was a shift, miniscule and trembling, and for a moment Dora almost gave up in bitter frustration. Her skin felt ready to sublimate straight off her, her entire body giving off golden steam. How could she do any more than this?

  As soon as the thought bloomed, a cool hand stroked through her, drawing it away. She gasped, recognising Keshnu's will in the touch. The Gift-Giver still floated by the torrent, hundreds of feet away, but his mind reached out to hers in equal parts relief and gratitude. A second wave followed the first, tinged with concern.

  Dora sent back the affirmative without thinking about it; yes, I can ho
ld it. For emphasis, she spread herself wider, feeling along the Abyss walls with hands the size of cities for extra, broader purchase. The Realmlessness itself seemed to recede.

  Keshnu sent caution, the cool edge of it spreading through her power-fevered mind and drawing her back to focus. Don't push yourself just because you can. There was so much affection in the contact that Dora had to catch herself short from hearing 'my love' at the end of it. Fanciful even to entertain the possibility, never mind arrogant.

  She responded with amusement, unchastened. She knew what she was doing. Keshnu needed to watch his own task. Dora could feel her wry smile bleeding out into the air around her. What would the other Wildren make of it? Did her rapport with Keshnu resemble the way they communicated with each other enough that they could understand?

  The possibility of something so private being laid bare before strangers was oddly thrilling. That was a dangerous thought. Turning some of her amused exasperation on herself, Dora bent her mind and her back to the task. Keshnu had a lot of work to do yet to get the fissure closed.

  Time passed with little change in her sensations. Between her hands, the Sherim stayed just out of balance, flaring occasionally when some eddy in the