It had been a long day. It had been a long several days, really. Growing things in the garden was exciting and interesting, and there was no question that Demi currently enjoyed more freedom than she had ever had before in her life.
She loved spending time with Dollop as she went about her day. She loved Glimmer’s often questionable advice and how much of the day he spent either preening or “meditating.”
She enjoyed looking after Heidi and Harriet. Both of the chickens had their own endearing personalities. Heidi was sweet and a little goofy. More than once she had made her way up onto the porch swing and laid an egg on one of the cushions there. Fortunately the eggs had all been found before they had been sat upon, and now Demi had an alert set to tell her whenever a fresh egg was laid and where she might find it. As far as Demi could tell, it wasn’t that she disliked her new home in the coop or the nesting boxes there; she just liked being sociable (and it was possible she had a crush on Glimmer, who often “meditated” on the porch).
Harriet, on the other hand, was always watching Demi’s every move whenever she was in the garden. Harriet had made many surprised clucks the first time Demi had performed the Earth Blessing prayer, but the hen had by now gotten used to it and invited herself in to enjoy small sprouted vegetables and weeds whenever Demi was in a lull, doing things like hilling the potatoes or thinning the carrots. They had an understanding: “You can eat these so long as you don’t eat those.” It was an arrangement that worked better than might have otherwise been expected.
And the canal project was progressing apace. Every day different people involved with the project stopped by to give her updates, or to ask questions, or get approval on decisions as they moved ahead with monitoring the brook and preparing the sites for the fox settlement and the water lock. Being the president of the Rosebrook Canal Authority was more than a ceremonial position, and Demi found herself drawing up paperwork, organizing records, and even creating summaries so the different groups involved could all stay up-to-date with what everyone else was doing.
In particular, research in the Goddess’s Lending Library occupied a significant amount of her time and mental energy. She had promised to get Izar the most complete and up-to-date information about the mechanical and engineering aspects of the canal project, and she did her best to make good on that, taking detailed notes, summarizing key points, and even producing her own pen-and-ink drawings when that was necessary. This all fell in line with her education as a Noble of the Wand, and she enjoyed it, but sincerely enjoying complicated work does not make that work any less complicated or time-consuming.
Demi loved her new life and all of the wholesome experiences it offered, but sometimes late at night she still felt tired. Sometimes she still felt anxious. Sometimes she still dwelt on the complications of her life as it had been and sometimes she felt overwhelmed by both the possibilities and the possible troubles that awaited her here in this place.
There were times at the end of a long day when she felt completely exhausted, and at such times she almost always found her way to the library, where she currently stood.
Books had a way of easing her troubles simply by existing, and she found the library to be a very calming place.
She put her hand on the book in her pocket, the good-luck charm she was still carrying, then walked over to the section of the bookcases where the rest of The Shadowstep Alchemist series would normally be shelved if they were not currently in her inventory. There were only two volumes currently on the shelf: the copy of volume 1 that was from the lending library and a new volume which had suddenly appeared on the shelves when they had unexpectedly expanded.
“Only up to volume 9,” she observed quietly, tapping at the spine of that volume with a fingertip. She had seen more on the shelves in Hollyhope’s vacation cottage, so she knew that more existed. She hadn’t yet caught up to volume 9, but just knowing that other volumes existed and weren’t yet in her possession made her antsy. “I have to keep working hard,” she decided, then called up her inventory to retrieve volume 5. That was where she was currently. She had decided to leave volume 9 on the shelf until she was ready to read it in hopes that it might entice further volumes to join it.
She took her book and went to go sit on the broad window seat.
On the other side of the glass, she could hear the comforting sound of the water rushing over the rocks. She looked down at the cover illustration. The Shadowstep Alchemist was still little more than a boy. In the story he was close to his twelfth birthday, but although his face was still doll-like and beautiful, his eyes were the same.
He looked much older than twelve.
“You take too much onto yourself,” she said to the boy in the illustration. “You can’t be responsible for absolutely everything in the entire world. You need to leave yourself space to breathe.”
She made a quiet, mirthless laugh as she leaned against the shelf at her back.
“But it’s never that simple, is it?” she asked. “You have responsibilities that you’re born into, and then others that you take on yourself because they need to get done, and if you don’t do them, then who will?”
She was still for a moment, but then let the softest whisper of a word escape her.
“But.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “But it’s exhausting,” she admitted to the quiet night. “Even if it’s something that you really want to do, it’s exhausting. You can’t pretend away the tiredness.”
She looked down at her small feet and wriggled her toes inside her socks.
Maybe she had been working for too long. She was tired.
“But at least the ones you take on yourself, you feel as if you can manage them somehow.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “It’s the ones that you didn’t choose which are always the hardest.”
As a young lady of the aristocracy, Demi had lived her life according to strict expectations.
She had to be perfect, but there was no single answer to what “being perfect” meant. The perfect girl for one situation was not the perfect girl for another, so she had to think on her feet always, ever ready to elegantly transition from one self to another, an exhibition of everyday magic.
The result was that she had not been able to fully relax around others, not even around the few people that she had trusted implicitly. The reason for this was simple: She was responsible for those people, the people that she trusted. She had authority over them. If anyone with more power than she had had ever caught her with even a whisker out of line, then the people that she trusted and cared about could be punished in her place.
What if, what if, what if...and then it would be all your fault.
That the what-ifs remained relatively shapeless did not make them any less upsetting.
But this place had been wonderful, fantastical, almost dreamlike in its coziness.
And so she had relaxed her guard. She had been herself without much concern for how she ought to be, and it had been wonderful.
She had met a lot of people who all seemed willing to become her friends if she just asked, if she just made the effort. She wouldn’t have to be alone here.
But somehow, before meeting anyone on this planet, she had become a goddess.
That made her responsible for them.
It made her responsible for all of them: for Duncan, for Seri, for Eleonore, for Tina, for Dollop and Finella—especially for Finella. As Hollyhope had generously shared, Demi was now responsible for everyone and everything, from the smallest of the archaebiota to the greatest of the “ferene” trees (she still didn’t know what they were).
She benefitted from incredible privileges in the world she had come from, and she was painfully aware of what those privileges cost. Of course she was expected to pay the world back for what had been given to her. She owed it. She owed the whole of her self, everything she was or could be.
And here she was a goddess. Surely she owed even more here than she had at home.
But it wasn’t only that she felt guilty because she was preoccupied by the worry that she never did enough.
It was also because she could not remain effortlessly cheerful about it.
She did not have the mental discipline to force cheerfulness on herself when she did not feel it, and she was long past feeling authentically cheerful about the weight of her responsibilities.
And yet she still felt guilty about not forcing those smiles, as if they were just as essential as her actual responsibilities, maybe even more important.
Which was ridiculous. She knew it was ridiculous, but it still felt—
She pushed the thought away.
Her responsibilities were her responsibilities, and she had to carry them.
Because if she didn’t do it, who would? If she didn’t do what was needed, who would?
And people needed a lot of everything.
Hollyhope had needed so much that she had summoned Demi up from an entirely different world.
That was honestly very convenient.
Focusing her efforts on helping others was one way of assuaging the guilt that was always pressing down on her. Because she was guilty, or rather, she felt guilt. Often for no other reason than the simple fact that she existed.
I have to do my best, she told herself. Everyone is counting on me. A leader can’t show their fears or tiredness to anyone. I need to be the goddess that everyone needs me to be.
She folded the volume of The Shadowstep Alchemist against her chest, and after calling for Dollop, she went upstairs to read in bed, to chase away her worries by falling into the world of her favorite alchemist.