There was silence for a moment. The boys looked astonished. Gavi's mouth hung open, and Jabari's brown eyes were wide.
"You followed the outcast?" Jabari asked, his voice almost a whisper. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees. Ben felt frustration welling up in him again. Kital was getting farther and farther away while they explained every single thing to the strangers, who kept using words that Ben didn't understand.
"I don't know about outcasts," Ben said, "or what you mean by that. Kital was given over, and we had a plan to get him back and then… well, I don't know what we were going to do. We couldn't go back to the village, we knew that. But then the people in boats took him. Can you help us? Because if not, we need to keep going, and find him."
"I've never heard of anyone following an outcast before," Jabari said.
"No," Gavi agreed, nodding and looking up at the branches overhead. "That's because no one has ever done it."
"How would you know?" Isika demanded. "Are you all-seeing?" Ben privately agreed with the other boy, he didn't think anyone had ever tried to rescue someone who had been given over. No Worker wanted the wrath of the goddesses on them.
"No," Jabari replied. "We are not all-seeing. We are the Maweel. We rescue the outcasts and bring them to our land. Every one. That is why Gavi knows that no Worker has ever tried to rescue one. We would know if someone had, just as we found out that you had made the attempt."
"What are you saying?" Isika said. Her face was shocked. "Are you telling us you take every one of them out of the water, like we saw yesterday?"
"Yes."
"Then the goddesses don't get any of the offerings?" Ben asked.
Jabari's face changed so swiftly that Ben sat back, afraid of the anger he saw.
"The goddesses," Jabari spit. There was a clatter and growl from the birds again. They flapped their large wings, stirring the leaves on the trees. Jabari stopped talking and watched the largest bird. His face became sad.
"The young ones know only what they have been taught," the female bird said. She turned and lifted her wings so the light shone on the bluest part of them, then suddenly glowed brightly as she flapped her huge wings again. "All things will be made right," she said. Her voice was deep and tendrils of wild song crept through Ben's tentative lid on his jungle of music. "The crooked will be made straight, the soiled will be bathed in light." Her voice changed back to normal. "Be patient, Jabari."
Jabari picked up a clod of hard sand and squeezed it so the sand ran from his palm to the ground. "I am sorry, Efir," he said.
Gavi looked up. "I was an outcast," he said.
All at once Ben knew why he looked familiar. He looked just like a boy from school. The butcher's son. Ben stared at him. It was impossible.
"Then…" Isika said, then stopped.
"Yes," Jabari said. "They're all with us. They are Maweel now too, not Poison-landers anymore."
Ben lost control of the jungle completely then. Images, songs, shadows of past things flashed through his mind until he couldn't see. A name flitted through his head, a note of the saddest music. Aria. His sister's name. He stood shakily and gripped the tree branch. Everyone looked at him, but as he touched the tree, his head cleared and the voices calmed. He took deep breaths, sure that he was going insane. Too many hours under yesterday's sun had burned the little sanity left after years of the bells of doom. He sat down.
Isika sat tall and straight, sticking her chin out. "Take us to him," she said, and it was not a request.
Gavi and Jabari looked at each other. Jabari shook his head, turning back to the three of them.
"It has never been done," he said. "We couldn't bring poison-landers to Azariyah, our city, or even deeper into Maween." Gavi nodded, his brow creased. Ben took a deep breath, ready to argue. But Nirral gave a long, deep cry, and Jabari sighed and dropped his head.
"Come into the trees and we will speak, Jabari," the bird said.
Jabari looked at Ben and Isika. "We go to talk with the Othra," he said. "And we will come back when we have made a decision." They turned and walked into the jungle and with a breath the birds lifted above the trees and flew a few feet above the jungle canopy, until they were out of sight.
CHAPTER 9
While they waited for Jabari and Gavi's decision, Isika helped Ibba back into her clothes. She was seething inside as she arranged the long skirt and shirt on her sister. Jabari and Gavi were taking forever to talk with the birds, and Isika buzzed with impatience.
She walked back to the large tree on the jungle line and tilted her head back to look at the branches above her head. The sun filtered down through the leaves of the strange, snake-like tree, casting patterns of shadow on the ground and on her arms and hands. It would be an excellent tree to climb, she thought.
She hadn't climbed a tree since she was very small, when they had first come out of the desert to the Worker village. She hadn't known then that climbing trees was forbidden, so she climbed the tempting yuci tree with white bark and wide branches, near her mother's kitchen garden. Her new father, Nirloth, punished her for it, but Isika's mother intervened quickly; he hadn't hit Isika more than twice. Everything had been easier when her mother was alive. Isika hadn't climbed a tree since.
She sat and waited, watching Ibba, who sat close to the water patting piles of sand and smoothing them to form large round domes. Isika thought of what Jabari had told them. All the children who had been sent out were alive. It was too incredible to believe. Isika had assumed the sent ones to be dead for so long, she found that she couldn't believe him. It couldn't be true. She drew in the sand, thinking hard about all of it, and when she looked at what she had made, she saw she had drawn a name: Aria. The lost sister who had been given over, breaking her mother's heart. Could Aria be alive? She blinked sudden tears out of her eyes. There was no use thinking about it. She knew from experience that hoping for things made disappointment more devastating. Aria was dead. With her own eyes Isika had seen the boat tossed into the dangerous ocean.
Benayeem was sitting a few feet away, dreaming, it seemed, staring out at the sea, quiet as usual. Isika wished he was more talkative. She needed to talk this over with someone, and Ben was better than no one. She shifted and sighed.
"We'll go anyway," she said loudly, filled with sudden conviction. She felt brave. She stretched her hands out in front of her to look at them, then turned them over to look at her tingling palms. "Even if they won't take us," she continued. "We'll go after him anyway."
Ben turned his head and met her eyes. He looked impossibly thin and tall, sitting there on the beach. She wondered briefly if she looked that way from a distance. He nodded, slowly, and she knew he would come with her if they had to go alone.
She was pacing the length of the curved beach when she heard the long cry of the female bird and turned to see Jabari and Gavi stepping out of the jungle, the Othra swirling around them. She ran back to the boys and waited, breathlessly. Jabari frowned, but Gavi was smiling.
"I don't know what the elders will think of this," Jabari said, sighing. "But the Othra have convinced us, and it seems that I am destined to push at the edges of what is allowed." He grinned, his face transformed. "We'll take you to Azariyah, our royal city, to look for your brother."
"We start this afternoon," he said after Isika and Ibba had finished exclaiming over the decision. He stood with one hand holding onto a swinging branch from the big tree. "For now, you should get some rest. You three look exhausted. It will be a long journey. The rescuers are ahead of us and they'll travel quickly, with only one poison-lander to guide. We won't be able to catch them before they get to the city."
He reached up to the branch above his head and caught it with both hands, pulling his chin over the branch four or five times before dropping lightly to the ground and walking away. Isika frowned. He was showing off, and he had said that they looked tired, when Isika had more energy than she ever remembered having. And then she thought of something that nearly made her fa
ll over.
"Ben," she gasped. "Their eyes! They haven't been shielding their eyes."
He looked surprised, then laughed at her. "Have you only just realized that? They've been meeting our eyes all day."
She had missed it. Why had she missed it? Was it because she had always strained against the rules? Or because she was sick with worry for Kital? But it was amazing, uncomfortable, breathtaking. A place where she could look into the eyes of anyone she chose. It was as unbelievable as the idea that all the sent ones were alive. Her excitement fizzled and she looked at her feet. She missed Kital, and there would be a long journey before she could hold him again.
She tried to prepare, but there was almost nothing to do. She helped Ibba roll her clothing into a pack to carry, and she pulled the boat farther onto the shore, wishing she could return it to Jerutha's brother, or simply thank him.
Her mind was disturbed, though, and she couldn't concentrate. She kept feeling a tugging on her mind, like she was forgetting something. She had felt something similar before, faintly, in the losh forest near their home. Here, it was stronger. The feeling grew, pulling on the edges of her consciousness like something she should know or should be doing. She looked around, frustrated and puzzled. Gavi was fishing, throwing a line into the sea and waiting until he caught a fish on the end of it, then pulling the shiny fish out of the water and dropping it into a basket at his feet. Jabari was packing a bag and seemed to be arguing with the birds. Benayeem sat on the sand and stared out at the sea again. Every once in a while he turned and drew something in the sand with his finger. Ibba sat beside him, singing. The pulling was stronger and stronger.
She closed her eyes and tried to push it out of her mind, but as soon as her sight was gone, the feeling was even stronger, and a clear direction and shape came to her. It was the tree. The tree was calling to her. The tree was calling to her! The tree with long snake-like branches, the one that had seemed like a good climbing tree.
She opened her eyes and walked toward it. The pulling eased as she went, and the closer she got, the more she felt that going to the tree was the right thing to do. She put a hand on one of its branches and drew a sharp breath. The tree was buzzing. It hummed under her hand. She pulled her hand away, but put it back when she realized it was almost painful to lose contact with the tree. The pulling came from its upper reaches. Isika needed to climb it. She picked up one foot and tried to put it on a branch, but her long, heavy skirt wouldn't allow her to stretch her leg very far. She paused.
It is not our way, she heard in her head, but then the humming of the tree brought tears to her eyes and she grew angry with the voice in her head. She pulled her heavy overdress off until she wore only the shorts and light shirt that were her underclothes. Ignoring everyone else, paying attention only to the call the tree was sending to her, she climbed onto the first branch and felt a burst of joy like light flow through her body. The light inside grew brighter as she climbed, and her limbs grew stronger as she went higher. She climbed until she reached the branch that sparkled in the edges of her vision, and she heaved herself onto it. She closed her eyes and tried to quiet her racing heart.
The humming of the tree filled her until she couldn't tell where she started and it stopped. It was more than the brilliant, joyful light behind her eyes, it was sound and motion inside her. Pictures began to flash through her mind and she allowed them to draw her along a path of memory.
Her father beating her for not gathering enough wood in the morning.
Her father berating her for lack of reverence in the temple. Her mother's face as she lay on her bed, wasting away from grief. Isika's tears as she cared for Kital, the nights and mornings of walking with him. She saw herself exhausted and grieving, small and bent. She saw herself in the garden, her face wet with tears. She saw herself making the food. She saw herself as an old woman, though she was only a child. Jerutha coming, the tentative steps toward love for her stepmother, the way she might feel toward an older sister.
Her father beating her when she screamed against his decision to give Kital over.
The three of them running toward the boat, Benayeem and Ibba shadows behind her. Now she saw the birds flying overhead and spotting them, calling to Jabari. And the colors behind her eyes became wilder and wilder, until she saw things that made no sense to her; a dark-skinned girl on a city street, a wall being torn down, a woman wailing, an old man with dark skin and a gentle face, a woman with a crown.
Isika gasped and opened her eyes. Though she would have sworn she had been flying, she was still in the tree. She picked up one hand and stared at it. All her life she had been so, so tired. She dragged herself out of bed in the morning, she shuffled, hunched over. The sun seemed to beat her into the ground, and in her heart the weariness was even deeper.
But now, as Isika opened and closed her hand… she felt great strength. She thought she could run to the city. She clambered down the tree and hopped up and down on her toes, reaching her hands over her head and trying to pull her chin over a branch, the way Jabari had done. Oof. Maybe not that strong.
She looked up to see the birds watching her, clicking at each other in that way they had when they were talking only amongst themselves. The smallest bird cocked her head to one side and it seemed for a moment that she was looking straight through Isika. Isika shook her head to clear it. Things had become so strange.
"Isika! Do you want to start the fire?" Gavi called, and she nodded, thankful there was some easy thing she could do; something familiar. When she walked away from the tree, she noticed that the feeling of being tugged had gone away completely, but the new strength didn't go anywhere. She straightened her shoulders and pulled her head up tall.
She scooped a small pit into the sand next to Gavi, heaping the wood into a little pile the way she always did. Building a cooking fire was no different from what she would be doing at home. What was different was the sea whispering gently along the shore, sparkling with thousands of tiny flecks of sunlight.
When she struck the flint, the fire bent obediently and flared up quickly, more quickly than she had ever been able to coax fire along. She sat back on her heels and looked at the little blaze, perplexed. She had just built a roaring fire in only a moment. That wasn't the usual way. What was this place?
Gavi roasted the fish along with potatoes he buried in the coals. Ben and Ibba and Isika ate most of the food. Isika could sense that Jabari and Gavi were holding back. She narrowed her eyes at them.
"You should eat," she said. "Don't let us eat everything."
"Don't worry about us," Gavi said. "You look like you haven't had a good meal in a while, and Jabari and I eat like kings. Plus, he," and he held his palm out toward Nirral, "would take me into the jungle for another talking-to if we didn't feed you well." The huge bird spread his wings just once, and they flashed green in the afternoon sun.
"Time to go!" Jabari announced, sauntering over to them as Isika put out the fire and Gavi and Ben washed their hands in the sea. Ibba was washing her face, dipping her hands in the crystalline water, cupping it to splash over her. She was wet from forehead to knees.
"Ready," Isika said, standing. Jabari held something out toward her, and as he stood looking at her, she felt her face getting hot. She was still wearing her underclothes after climbing the tree.
"Here's something easier for you to wear while we're traveling," he said. "Sorry that I only have boy clothes." He smiled at her, and she saw he had a dimple in one cheek. His hair was tight and curly, cut close to his head. When he turned, she spotted a scar on his back, peeking just over his shirt, near the base of his neck. Isika was bursting with questions for him, but she took the clothes without a word and went into the shelter of the jungle to change. Getting in wasn't as easy as Jabari and Gavi had made it look. As she tripped over a vine she heard him call out.
"We'll walk along this way and wait for you in the first clearing," he said. "Ibba, go with your sister. I don't have anything small enough for yo
u, but you can wear the little shorts and undershirt you have."
Inside the curtain of leaves under the tree she had climbed, Isika looked at what he had given her, Ibba drawing close like a curious little tree squirrel. There was a pair of grey pants. Isika put them on and found that they were wide-legged and made of a very soft, light material. She drew the strings tight, tying the pants on. Next she wriggled into the short-sleeved tunic. It was light brown, with intricate designs along the edges, and far too big for her—she could have fit Ibba into the shirt with her. Largeness aside, both things were far easier to wear than the heavy skirt and tunic she had been wearing. The clothes were so light and airy that she felt as though she wasn't even wearing clothes. She walked back and forth, testing them out, and the cloth flapped pleasantly against her skin.
"You look nice," Ibba pronounced, jumping around like a puppy, arms and legs bare. She seemed completely happy and not disturbed about the changes that were happening to them. They grinned at each other for a minute, then Isika quickly redid Ibba's braids, twisting and smoothing the stray hairs back in, and fixed her own hair, smoothing her coarse, tight curls, braiding them neatly.
She rolled their old clothes up and left them in a bundle at the bottom of the tree. Just before they turned to follow the others, she put a hand on the tree trunk. She felt the humming strength running up and down its branches.
"Thank you," she whispered, and they turned to follow the others deeper into the jungle.
CHAPTER 10
They walked all day. Ben and his sisters must have looked funny, stumbling along with their mouths open. Ben saw the comical look on Isika and Ibba's faces, and he felt the same expression lighting up his own. But he couldn't help himself; the jungle was amazing. He had never seen such a beautiful place. Ibba's feet hardly touched the ground as she danced and skipped along the path.
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