The Spirit Thief(93)

“You’ll go where all water eventually goes,” Eli said gently. “To the ocean.”

“The ocean?” The light at the spirit’s heart fluttered madly. “Not there. I’ll die before I go there. You’ll have to kill me first.”

“Why are you so afraid?” Eli said. “All of your water has been through the ocean thousands of times.”

“But he hasn’t.”

Eli sighed and turned to watch Miranda hobble toward them, clutching her sides. Her face was pale and exhausted, and fresh yellow bruises stood out stark on her pale, waterlogged skin. Her eyes, however, were determined as she dropped to the ground beside the thief, breathing heavily.

“Water spirits flow in and out of each other,” she gasped. “Rain falls and makes creeks that flow to rivers and, eventually, as you say, to the sea, but,” she said and looked up at the slowly turning water, “a sea is more than the water that passes through it. Even the smallest creeks have their own souls separate from the water that fills them. You can’t just blithely send that soul to fend for itself in the ocean.”

“She speaks the truth,” Mellinor rumbled. “The ocean is a hungry mass too large to have a cohesive soul of its own. As soon as I joined the waves, that mob of water spirits would tear me apart. They would split me into smaller and smaller pieces with each tide, and with every split I’d grow weaker and stupider, until I could no longer remember my own name.”

Eli shook his head. “You’d still be alive.”

“To what end?” Mellinor’s light flashed wildly as the water heaved. “I’d be worse than a ghost. At least if I dry up here, I can die as myself, with my soul intact and entirely my own.”

“Is that really what you would prefer?” Eli said.

The sphere bobbed in the approximation of a resolute nod. “If you won’t let me have my land, yes.”

Eli thought a moment, then nodded gravely. “Very well, we’ll do as you ask.”

Miranda looked up at Eli, horrified. “You can’t just kill him.”

“That’s how he wants it!” Eli shouted, spinning to face her. “Were you listening at all? Why do you care, anyway? As I recall, he was trying pretty hard to kill you when I interfered.”

“He’s in this position because of us!” Miranda yelled back. “If it wasn’t for Gregorn, none of this would have happened. We have a duty to make things right!”

“Make things right?” Eli flung out his arms to take in the whole of the ruined throne room. “Miranda, look around! Do you really think the masters of Mellinor are going to be happy if we tell them that everyone in the country has to move? Do you think they’ll even listen? Even if they did, how long would it take to get everyone safely out? A week? A month? What’s Mellinor here going to do while he waits, hang in the air? He’ll evaporate before the masters finish their committee meeting. You know as well as I do that a displaced spirit has two choices: find a home or die. I don’t want the second option any more than you do, but there’s no place for him here, and he won’t take my compromise and go to the sea, so guess where that leaves us.” Eli crossed his arms and glared down at Miranda. “He’s made his choice, so, for once, can you put aside your Spiritualist dogma and just let the spirit be?”

Miranda pushed herself up, her fists shaking with fury. “I won’t let you kill him.”

Eli met her glare head on, and they stood that way for several moments, like children having a staring contest. Finally, when it was clear she wasn’t going to back down, Eli flung up his hands.

“All right,” he said. “If you’re so concerned, you deal with him.”

Miranda blinked; she hadn’t expected him to turn this back on her. “I don’t know what to do.”

Eli made a series of frantic “you see?” gestures, which Miranda ignored. Instead, she looked down at her hands. They seemed so bare and fragile with only the one small ring on her pinky. She blinked hard, then blinked again, and her head shot up. “I could take him as a servant.”

Eli stopped flailing and stared at her blankly.

“He could live with me,” she said, pointing at the small ring. “Then he would have a home but no one would need to be displaced.”

Eli’s eyes flicked skeptically from her to her pinky finger and back again. “It’s an interesting idea, but you can’t keep him in that, you know.”

She looked down at the ring in surprise. “What? Oh, no, not this one. I mean, it’s empty, but there’s no way even a fraction of his spirit would fit. Besides, I’m saving it. Look,” she said and took a deep breath, “forget the ring. I’m not even talking about the ring.” She pointed at her chest. “I could do what you did, with the lava spirit.”