“Are you dead or alive, girl?”
The voice comes from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. It’s thick, and deep, but feminine too.
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully.
“Which one do you want to be?” the voice asks. And then there is a woman attached to it, standing in front of me with her hands clasped in front of her. She is tall with brown skin and wise eyes. Her robes are bright gold and orange, like the leaves in the woods around me. She reminds me of one those brightly colored Hindu women who wear those sarong things. And she jingles when she moves. Little strings of tiny bells hang around her wrists, and ankles, and neck. A bejeweled headpiece drapes pearls and crystals across her forehead. Her eyes are dark and wide and so is her smile. “This question shouldn’t be so hard, Pie Vita. Which do you want to be?”
I have to take a deep breath, because I know her. “Ostanes.”
“Quick! There is no time left for reunions, child. You need to decide. Do you want to be alive or dead? Do you want to be a monster or a human? Do you want to be cursed or not?”
“I get a choice?”
“No,” she says. “Not really.” I screw up my face in confusion. “You’re dying, girl. The sheriff’s weapon hit you in the chest. You are, in this very moment, still alive only because Pell froze you before most of the damage could be done. But he can’t stop it, Pie. He can only put it off. You will die today, one way or another, because you are not eros. You are not the caretaker of Saint Mark’s Sanctuary.”
“What?” I look down at my hand and the ring is still there.
“That’s not the same ring. You know this. You saw Grant’s ring. What did it look like?”
The urgency in her voice is gone now, so I take a moment to think back. “It had… a face.” I nod, looking up at her.
“Whose face?”
I’m about to say I don’t know, but I do. It was the same face above the doors in the sanctuary. Which isn’t some generic mythological Green Man. It is someone very specific. “Saturn’s face.”
Ostanes rewards me with a gentle smile. She has a very calming nature to her. I like it. “He is old now, Pie. He has almost no power left. Gods can only rule with permission. They need humans to give them power and this world’s humans left Saturn behind centuries ago. This sanctuary is mine. He has no power here. But…” She pauses to make sure I’m listening. This must be the important part. “Neither do I. He made sure of that in the last battle. That’s why there is a curse. He wants my power. Everyone”—she whispers this part, leaning forward a little—“wants my power.”
“The book,” I say.
She nods and straightens up. “That book does not belong to Tarq and eventually you will have to get it back.”
“What?” I huff, annoyed. “Why do I have to do it?”
“You can choose to stop, if you’re done.”
“Done? I don’t even understand what you’re talking about now.”
“Do you want to be a monster, Pie? Do you want to live in the curse with Pell? Do you want to continue? Do you want to try and make a difference and fix things? Or do you want to quit?”
I look down at my monster body. I like it. I do. But… “This is not me,” I say.
“Isn’t it?” Ostanes chuckles a little. “Are you sure?”
“It’s not me. I’m Pie. I’m—”
“You are this, girl. You are chimera. You are nymph. You are gorgon. You are minotaur.”
“What?” I almost choke out the word.
“You are monster.”
Now, I am annoyed. “Well, last week I wasn’t a monster. Last week I was just a girl. I had a past. It wasn’t a good one, but it was mine. I’m real. And I’m not this…” I look down at myself. Did she use the word gorgon? Wasn’t Medusa a gorgon? I am suddenly very confused, and tired, and I have an overwhelming feeling of defeat. “I don’t think I can deal with this right now.”
She tsks her tongue at me. “That’s too bad.” Then she sighs. “You did all this work. All this magic to get me here. To save the sanctuary from falling into the hands of these damaged and broken gods. One is as bad as the other. They were banished for a reason. And now you pretend that you’re just… what? Just this girl called Pie who stumbled into the cursed monsters of Saint Mark’s?”
“I did though. I literally did! I answered an ad—”
“Whose ad?”
“What?”
“Whose ad was it?”
“It was… Grant’s ad. He called me here. And when I got here, he left. And I don’t know his whole fucking story, so I guess there’s more to it than that”—she actually guffaws at this—“but my point is, I was someone else before I got here.”