Page 67 of These Godly Lies
Anna brings a hand to her mouth, not entirely sure if she’s hiding her horror or her amusement. She has to fight the urge to glance at the man in question. “Youblackmailedhim?!”
The grin he flashes is crooked and sharp. It reminds Anna of the god he once was—someone who plucked and pulled at strings as effortlessly as a pianist plays keys. She supposes he still is, even if it is on the small scale that is their mortal lives. Somehow, she can’t fault him for it—for taking this small amount of control back.
But perhaps that’s just her dislike for Mr. Merry speaking.
Mr. O’Connelly backs into the auditorium, wheeling the school’s sole television on a cart across the wooden floors. The students whoop, clapping, and the red-headed man pauses long enough to take an exaggerated bow. The janitor polishes his nails on his coveralls,just under his name tag as he basks in the applause before continuing to roll the cart to the middle of the center of the floor. “Where do you want her, Mr. Principal, sir?”
Merryweather’s thick jaw clenches around words he doesn’t dare speak in front of the students. Jack O’Connelly is the only one who refuses to call him by name (Anna suspects it’s because he’s the one who dubbedMr. Merryto begin with). “There’s fine,” he answers, lips forced into a smile and words slipping between his teeth.
Mr. O’Connelly gets to work plugging it in and setting up the antenna. Around him, the volume rises as he works—excited chatter filling the empty spaces of the large room. A low static sounds from the television as he moves the long metal rabbit ears until, slowly, the hum of static is replaced by voices, and the fuzz on the screen sharpens into grainy black and white images of lunar craters and voices break through the static.
Within seconds, the voices that once filled the auditorium go silent. Anna leans in close, her eyes never leaving the screen as she whispers in his ear. “Do you think they’ll really do it? Walk on the moon?”
Khiran stares at the picture, his fingers lacing with hers. “I think it will either be a success or another tragedy and nothing in between,” he murmurs, lacing their fingers. Anna would chastise him, but she’s fairly certain there’s not a single pair of eyes that aren’t glued to the screen. “Either way, we’re watching history.”
For the first ten minutes, they watch as the broadcasters show snippets of the reel she and Khiran watched that morning before cutting to the NASA control room. When the first live footage comes in, the picture is upside down before it’s corrected moments later. Then Neil Armstrong comes down the ladder, his fuzzy form in the shadow of the lunar module. She listens as he says the words that will be remembered by the world and recognized for generations. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Khiran stares at the screen, eyes wide and lips parted in breathless laughter. “Themoon, Anna. There are humans walking on the moon, right now, and we’rewatchingit.”
In that moment, Anna is taken back to those alley streets in Delhi.Only, this time, it’s him who wears wonder as visibly as if it were colored powder. She’s never seen him wear such an expression, has never watched awe and amazement mingle into something that almost looks likehope.
She has known him for nearly a millennia but has only spent decades at his side. Anna mourns all the moments she’s missed— regrets that their history has been built more on the world’s tragedies and so few of its triumphs. Did his lips part around an open smile the first time he heard a faceless voice on a radio? Did his eyes shine with questions when he first watched a plane take flight?
Silently, she makes a promise to herself to memorize this moment—both the achievement of man and the wonder in her lover’s expression. To hold it close to her heart, so she will never forget what she’s fighting to keep. They’re safe for now, enough for even Khiran to relax into a mortal life, but they both know Marcia won’t give up the hunt. Even if she wanted to, The First would demand their capture from his throne—too insulted to think of letting them go unpunished.
On the seat of the scarred wooden bleachers, Anna kisses him and doesn’t care who’s watching.
She doesn’t look at the night sky the same way after that. Doesn’t see the moon and the stars as something out of reach and unattainable.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He’s lost her. Ashes sting his eyes and blister his tongue as he screams her name again, and again, and again. His lungs ache with the soot that lines them, but he can’t stop. He can’t lose her to the fire, too.
NORTHERNTERRITORY, AUSTRALIA
JUNE1975
Maybe it was a mistake, moving their lives from a small town to the bush.
She had wanted a bit of quiet after living within a community— longed for the peace that comes with a simple life and solitude. Part of her never stopped missing the home they left behind… of silly luxuries like fresh eggs gathered by her hands or honey milked from her hives. Of speaking loudly and freely because there are no ears to hear them for miles and wearing her sleeves short without feeling the stares.
So they packed their things and took their wages and bought a tiny ranch swallowed by dust and sunsets. It lacked every convenience living in town has to offer—no grocers, no shops, no banks. But in the absence of nosy neighbors and thin walls, they found a night sky that looks the same as the one they once stared up at centuries ago, surrounded by sounds that feel as old as they are.
It’s all on fire now.
The smoke is what wakes her. Anna doesn’t have nightmares often, not anymore, but when she does it is usually of flames licking at her skin or of the ashes pulled from Eira’s smile. So when she wakes up gasping, it takes her a moment to realize the smell is more than whispered echoes of her dream.
“Khiran!” She shakes him awake, her pulse thundering in her ears. The scent isn’t overwhelming, but it’s heavy enough to warn her something is desperately wrong. The bushfire season had been horrendous this past year, leaving more than fifteen percent of the continent scorched, but most of it had slowed to an end with the Australian summer. It seems the Northern Territory, with its arid heat and thick grasses, doesn’t seem to have been gifted such a reprieve. “Khiran, wake up!”
He jerks awake, gripping her wrist with a strength that would bruise mortal flesh. It’s only once he finds they’re alone that his hold softens, his chest rising and falling as his breathing slows. Anna wonders if there were smoke-fueled nightmares playing behind his eyelids, too. “Anna, what—”
“I smell smoke.” Her voice tremble with implications.
Khiran frowns, momentarily lost, before looking to the window. He throws off the sheets, the lines of his bare back and shoulders flexing in the dim light as he stands. Anna follows, her hand brushing his arm and taking comfort in his touch. Past their fields and fence lines, an angry glow lights the horizon. Red and urgent, like the flash of warning lights amid disaster.
His jaw flexes. “We need to go.” He turns from the window, going toward their dresser. His hands rifle through her drawers, pulling out a change of clothes and tossing it to her before pulling a t-shirt over his head.
Anna grips the dress he tossed her, hands trembling. It’s the one she likes to wear when she’s gardening because the black cotton is breathable and easy to work in. Easy to run in. She glances over her shoulder, back to the window. “You don’t think it’s them… do you?” Pulling up a pair of slacks, his fingers still as he registers her question. His eyes meet hers. “There’s nothing unnatural about a bushfire.”
