THE DAYBREAK

 SIRIUS TO RISE
Summoners’ union votes to support war effort

Following months of a contentious issue that has fractured the public, the Fellowship, the nation’s leading organization of summoners, cast their vote last night. In a slim 51% majority, the organization approved the summoning of Sirius, avatar of destruction, to bolster military operations currently underway in the Mintaka archipelago.

Hanan, avatar of hope and diametric spirit to Sirius, was the champion of the minority vote. Had the election swung their way, her summoning would have been invoked instead, providing marital force and security to all across our nation who oppose the ongoing war.

— Victoria Times, 15th Day, Harpstring Sun, 1912, Vol. 82, No. 14  

* * *

The results of the vote were laid bare on the board, and the only thing Anya could offer up in her moment of crisis was a blank stare, her mouth agape.

The union administrator stationed with monitoring the results room this morning took count of the number of people trying to push their way up to the front. He cleared his throat. “When you’re ready, miss, please move out of the way so others can see. Thank you.”

Anya hobbled out of the way of the growing crowd behind her. The curls of her hair, dark like the color of deep umber, shielded her somewhat from the piercing stares of her peers. On her way out she felt their judgment, heavy like the gaze of a pack of vultures.

* * *   

The news was, of course, the only thing anyone in the Victorian capital could talk about. When the decision became public, it immediately made its way to the desk of the President. Looking out the arched windows of his suite, he watched as the dawning of the sun cast its glow over the bay’s waves, where in the far distance was the island nation of Mintaka. He knew, as everyone now knew, that they would soon face a reckoning. A quiet smile crept up across his face—the vote had swayed to his liking.

And all across the city streets, the news traveled past storefronts, hopped from seat to seat throughout streetcars, nestled itself in office spaces. Debates raged on, like they had on for months when the summoners’ union first announced their decision to put up the issue for a vote. Pro-war, anti-war. The summoners had the means to prop up one side over the other, but they, too, were divided on where to stand.

And now Anya found herself here, at the end of the line, where all her nightmares had come true. Hurrying out of the Fellowship’s headquarters, only one string of thoughts occupied her mind as if imprisoned inside: The war effort continues.

And then: No, the war effort wins. With Sirius sanctioned, nothing can stop this country’s imperial project. Our troops march on.

And finally: Hanan will not rise.

Striding past the crowds, Anya turned the corner to the stairwell and went down to the first floor, where her faction had set up shop in the offices in the back of the union building. Upon entering, her coworkers—her community, her family—all turned to look at her.

“No need to pity me,” she said, her voice still scratchy from last night’s final hours of campaigning. Memories of the evening’s final rally in the streets flooded back to her, but she shoved those thoughts away for now. All the hope in the air then, the palpable sense that change was on the horizon—to linger on any of these moments would threaten to stop her in her tracks entirely. “I’ll be okay. How are you all holding up?”

Odessa, one of Anya’s co-chairs in the faction, came up to her. The older woman wore a pained, sympathetic look on her face.  “Oh, Anya. There’s no need to put up a front.” 

She swept Anya up in a hug, who immediately choked back the urge to cry. Yet despite her resistance, a deep welling of grief came up from within, and soon she buried her head in Odessa’s shoulder, the fabric of her co-chair’s blouse now wet with the first onset of tears.  

* * *

Odessa ended up walking Anya back home, despite the latter’s insistence that she would be alright getting home alone. She only lived a few minutes away, but her friend was nothing if not stubborn.

“To be frank with you, friend, I know you’re going to need a lot of time to yourself,” Odessa said. “To recenter or what have you. But please be careful.”

With a furrowed brow, Odessa looked behind her, and then across the street. Her eyes were clearly scanning for something, but found naught. She inched closer to Anya and whispered, “You never know what those Sirius cultists will be up to in the next few days. Emboldened by their win.”

Anya didn’t know how to respond to that. But deep inside, the words resonated. She heard the truth in them.

They eventually came to a stop upon reaching her place—a tiny house of chipped painting protected by a half-dented iron gate. White daffodils grew stubbornly on the concrete path leading up to the door.

Odessa gave Anya a nod goodbye. “Stay vigilant, love. And when you’re ready, come find us.”

That night, Anya paced around her bedroom, unable to lay today’s torment to rest. Occasionally she would bump up against the stacks of arcanist tomes strung around her floor, almost toppling them over in her fretting.

All those nights. All those speeches. And in the quiet of this bedroom, she remembered all of her prayers here, spoken in deference to Hanan and her mighty guidance.

Hanan: the spirit of peace and new tomorrows. If the die had been cast differently, and the vote to bring forth Sirius had been struck down, then the whole of Victoria would have been turned on its head. Under Hanan’s shining influence, the nation of Mintaka would have been able to rest their weapons down for the first time in a long, long while. The President, in a face-off against his own people and their summoned icon, would have been pressured to halt his ships from trespassing upon Mintaka’s waters ever again.

Anya sunk down to the floor, her back against the food of her bed. How exhausting it was, to spend another night filled of endless yearning for a better tomorrow. No relief in sight.

She began tracing a sigil on the wooden floorboards. A simple pattern of a pair of three-pronged Y’s to form the impression of a bird’s footprints, followed by a spin of her fingers pressed together to form two circles around the first trace.

“Armias,” she murmured.   

The sigil burst into a flash of flickering yellow light. A small avian-like creature, his hide of feathers dark and glossy like a crow’s, hopped out of the now-fading circle to take in his surroundings. His three sets of beady green eyes looked up at his summoner expectantly.

“Pass a message on to Odessa and the others for me.”

She pondered, wondering exactly what she was going to say. The fight itself wasn’t over, and she knew that, but its most recent chapter had closed. No more rallying the vote. No more canvassing day in and day out across the city. The exhaust had finally caught up to her.

“Tell them I’m going to need some time to just . . . not be present. I won’t be fighting with them on the front lines for a while. But tell them it’s okay to visit me.” A pause. “But bring some food.”

Armias cawed in understanding. With a flap of his wings, he turned to her half-open window and flew out, his feathery body illuminated against the backdrop of the growing moon.

* * * 

True to her instruction, her friends came bearing meals.

They carried with them news about the Fellowship post-vote. With each visitor, Anya listened intently, refraining to comment too much on current events. For now, she just wanted to listen.

“The President is ecstatic about the Fellowship’s choice, of course,” Yorrick said during the morning’s visit. The big, scruffy man was another of Anya’s close friends in the Fellowship, and she always appreciated his quiet but ever-honest input. “And pro-Sirius leadership in the Fellowship is telling us Hanan devotees that ‘it’s time to heal.’ That this vote caused too big of a rift in our community, and as summoners we need to come together now in solidarity.”

They each took several bites of the orange-currant scones he had brought over. “No solidarity for the lives overseas they’re about to ruin, of course.”

“Never,” Anya replied. “If the havoc they wreck is out of sight, and they inflict it onto people they’ve been convinced to not even see as fellow human beings, then they’ll always co-sign it.”

“Anything to solicit the biggest benefits the President has to offer to the Fellowship, mind you.” Yorrick took a sip of his tea, still piping hot. “More under-the-table funding for research projects. More conspicuous cabinet appointments. That’s how these votes have been going more and more often, it seems.”

After an hour or so of catching up, Yorrick took his leave. With Anya taking time off, he had been working in her stead, coordinating Hanan’s remaining believers together with Odessa and the others. More meetings to organize, more plans to execute. Standing on the porch with her cup of tea in hand, she waved him off as he set down the street. The air was particularly chilly in the late of daybreak.

* * * 

The next revelation in Anya’s life came in the form of a headache-inducing knock on her door.

“Coming!” She called out as she hurried down the flight of stairs. Just stop knocking, she thought. She was not in the mood for any loud noises, especially not at an hour like this.

Strange. All her friends had been visiting during the day. No one, it seemed, wanted to unnerve her by stopping by for an unannounced visit in the deep of the evening.   

Peering out of the peephole, Anya saw nothing. All she could hear now was the thumping sound of her own heartbeat.

Odessa’s words echoed in her mind. You never know what those Sirius cultists will be up to.

Her hands trembled as it hovered over the doorknob. Before she made the decision, though, her senses caught up to her.

“Beles,” she whispered.

Like a shadow rising from the ground, a spectral force rose up from beneath and behind Anya. Covered head to toe in metal armor, the imposing figure unsheathed her longsword and took a knight’s stance, hands clasped around the hilt of her blade.

With a steady exhale of breath, Anya turned the doorknob, now properly guarded.

Just like the view from the peephole, no one was on the porch to greet the summoner. She looked out in the pitch-black distance, past the street and into the valley of terraced houses down the road. Nothing.

Relieved, Anya started to make her way back outside until she glanced down, where she found her visitor: a tall woman with long dark hair, lying in a crumbled heap at the foot of her door.

* * *  

“I’m struggling to understand, miss.”

The woman from Anya’s porch took another sip of the soup from the mug Anya prepared for her. She held eye contact with Anya, her stare piercing but not judgmental. Just inquisitive. Yet Anya couldn’t turn her gaze away.

“You can tell, can’t you, summoner?” the woman said. “I am no human.”

“Yes, that much is clear.” Anya tried to choose her words carefully. Although she couldn’t detect hostility from the woman's intentions, and although Beles stood guard just a few feet away, she would be a fool if she wasn’t cautious. “You’re someone’s summon. But whose? And why have you come here?”

“Anya, listen to my words again. I . . .”

“Spirit, please—”

“. . . am your summon. But let me say more. I am everyone’s summon. At least, everyone who believes in me. Who still desires for me to be here.”

“But that would mean . . .” Words could not suffice. Anya took in the woman’s appearance, ghostly and faintly flickering, yet radiant all the same.

Anya cleared her throat. “Hanan.” 

The avatar of hope looked over her shoulder, the faint line of a smile on her face. Wordlessly, she steered her gaze towards the moon, almost full and shining bright from the view of it outside the kitchen window.

* * *  

A few days passed.

Anya’s friends stopped coming to her house. She knew why: mobilization always followed Fellowship election results; the losing side never stays down for long. On a brief visit to drop off some borrowed campaign supplies, Odessa caught Anya up: Sirius’ summoning would occur at the start of next week. Half of the Fellowship were needed to fully staff the group summoning ritual. With a just little over half of the body voting in favor of Sirius, the party’s whips were reaching the final stages of coordinating said voters to come on time for the fated day.

Outside the headquarters, there were going to be protests. Odessa, Yorrick, and the other co-chairs were rallying Hanan’s supporters together. They were encouraging anyone who still had some fight in them to continue standing for the cause.

“We’ve got our hands full trying to get everyone together, so we won’t be able to visit often,” read the message scrawled in Odessa’s writing, delivered by a carrier pigeon that perched on Anya’s balcony. “If you’ve feeling ready then, then by all means come join us. Take care, friend.”

Not yet, Anya thought upon reaching the end of the parchment. I have something I need to deal with first.

In the dark of the bedroom, blinds drawn, Hanan slept. Anya tried to give the feeble spirit as much as time to rest as she could, and for that reason she was thankful that she no longer had guests stopping by to visit.

In that moment and later still, Anya couldn’t vocalize why she didn’t tell her friends about her special visitor. Perhaps it was something about wanting to keep something only to her. She desperately wanted to know why she was chosen, and not one of her fellows still out there fighting the vote.

Hanan gradually gained her strength, bit by bit. Just enough to speak with Anya as the summoner visited, bringing with her daily meals. (Yet another peculiarity of this strange situation: Hanan ate, yet spirits don’t need sustenance. Anya couldn’t help but ponder on how human-yet-not-human Hanan really was.)  It started with friendly greetings every time Anya visited, the vigor in Hanan’s voice coming more and more alive.

Then, Hanan started telling stories.

She spun tales of scholars and sages, of kings and thieves. All people who put their belief in her, the saint of enduring hope and peace. To reach a breakthrough in their research, to see the kingdom still standing in the ashen wars to come, to receive leniency in the wake of the pending sentencing for their crimes.

And she would be there for them, when no one else was. They could never hear or see her, but she clung close to their soul, and for reasons they couldn’t properly explain, their belief in the possibilities a new day could bring never completely wavered.

Anya was enraptured by Hanan’s words. She saw fragments of herself in all who believed in the spirit: in the herbalist who hoped that the forest would grant them what she needed to bring aid to her sick father, in the sailor who prayed in the roaring winds and darkness for the ship to make it through the storm. Their desperation, their drive—the summoner was taken back to her fledging days in the profession, when her proudest accomplishment was being able to send a barely fully formed Armias out to deliver messages on command. Now, she had risen across the ranks of the Fellowship; her lifelong career wish had come true.

But with every story of Hanan’s reflected another side: a devotee of Sirius who asked for his aid in causing carnage and destruction. For millennia, the two were summoned for polar opposite reasons, their respective believers often at direct odds. Sirius, for the invading kingdom and Hanan, for the defending mountain tribes. Sirius, for the seafaring raiders, and Hanan, for the runaway family, fleeing from their coastal hometown.

“Over and over again, this story goes. What your country envisions for Mintaka is more of the same.” Hanan’s gaze turned downward, finished in thought and now preoccupied with the empty bowl on her lap. “You’re a lovely cook, Anya. May I ask for more?”

Anya carried the bowl closer.

* * * 

The darkness had only just begun to envelop the evening sky, and already Anya could hear shouting in the far distance. Several blocks away, at the Fellowship’s headquarters, Anya pictured it: Odessa and Yorrick and everyone at the end of the blockaded street, in a standoff against the armed guards preventing them from entering. The pro-Sirius summoners, identified beforehand by union leadership, were hurriedly ushered in, past the protesting crowd. Reporters and civilians alike gathered on the edge of the growing scene, eager to see what will become of tonight’s ritual.

Today was also the first day that Hanan had the strength to leave the house. Anya found her in the backyard sitting on the porch, looking up at the moon again. Anya could not read the expression on the spirit’s face.

Anya opened the screen door and, in silence, sat down next to her. Their fingers, just barely touching, pressed against the faintly damp redwood.

After a moment of silence, Anya said, “If I close my eyes now, I can already see it.”

She took a deep breath and joined Hanan in looking up at the moon. “Fire. Fire everywhere, ravaging across Mintaka’s rainforests. Parents and children backed up against the corner of their basement, hiding, holding on to each other as Victorian troops rout their village.”

Hanan peered over at her. “A foregone conclusion, it seems.”

“Before I joined the Fellowship, I believed that with all that combined power and wisdom, they would always steer themselves to do the right thing. Now I don’t know what to believe.”

Anya met Hanan’s gaze. “In all your stories, for everyone who’s ever put their faith in you, there has always been someone who’s turned towards everything you’ve been against. And in their desire to destroy, they seek out Sirius.”

“An eternal cycle, yes,” Hanan said. “And you want to ask me if this never-ending conflict is all what life has to offer, correct?”

Anya paused, then gathered her thoughts again. “I-I just want to believe that a better future is possible. The only thing I hope for . . . is a world where no one has to fear anything. Right now, across the sea, they’re undoubtedly shoring up their defenses, but against Sirius’ power . . .”

“It seems impossible, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Anya said.

No hopeful answers to this bloody, unyielding battle. Just the agony of having to live through it.

“Consider the alternative, then,” Hanan said. “If no one speaks up, if no one ever fights back. You want a future that seems impossibly out of reach, but Anya, your everyday words and actions are already creating that world you want to see. With every breath you take is a victory. And so is each passing day you find the strength to continue facing your fears, for everyone’s sake. You’re much stronger than you believe you are.”

“. . .”

“Never give up,” Hanan whispered. “Especially not now.”

Anya stared at the goddess for a moment that could have spanned an eternity.

Then, she got up.

“I think I know why you came to my doorstep all those days ago.” Anya balled her hands into fists—not in anger, but in resolve. 

Hanan made a motion to stand up as well. Standing side by side, the goddess towered over the summoner.

“All I felt on the day the results came out was despair. That everything I’ve been fighting for was all for naught. But buried underneath all of that . . .”

“. . . Was your belief in me, still. Shining brighter than anyone else’s. And so I was summoned, as weak as I only could’ve been by the will of one person alone.

Anya let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding.  “Yes. And I still believe in this fight. This impossible, never-ending fight. But I don’t believe in following the Fellowship’s rules on this issue. Not this one.”

“What do you want, Anya?”

“To champion you.” Anya turned her head to the sound of a particularly loud wave of cries coming from the distance. “We may not have had half the Fellowship backing us the night of the vote, but we were damn close. Now that I have the strength to take another step . . . I want them to see us. I know that we can still make a difference tonight.”

The goddess stared, an indeterminable look set across her face. Then, she smiled.

“Very good, summoner. We walk together.”

END