World Whisperer

by Rachel Devenish Ford

  On the third day, when the river was impossibly wide and drawing near to the sea, they rowed to the bank and pulled the boats up high, covering them with wide branches from the nearby trees, the ones with leaves as tall as a person. Isika adjusted her boots and looked up to see Aria doing the same, tightening one of her buckles. She met Isika's eyes as she straightened, and for a moment they looked at one another, then Aria turned back to Jabari and they continued talking. Isika felt close to tears. Overhead the Othra fluttered. Wait, child.

  The landscape was different. The trees grew sparser, and red rocks lined the path the rangers chose. In places, the rocks towered over their heads and Isika felt prickles up her neck as she thought of all the possible hiding spots for waiting enemies. The rangers were on their guard, taking turns to run ahead and check the road ahead of the company. The red rocks were beautiful and strange, twisting in shapes that curled into the sky. Others were sheared away, with long flat faces. Often there were carvings in the walls of rock—pictures and words that Isika couldn't quite make out.

  They rounded a curve in the road and ahead Jabari and a ranger stood searching the ground. Isika and the others soon caught up with them.

  "This is it?" Ivram asked.

  "I think we found it," Jabari said, nodding and scanning the ground.

  "Found what?" Isika asked.

  "The place where our rescuers were overtaken," he answered, pointing at various places on the ground. "There's a poisonous magic residue here, and the earth is churned up and kicked around. See, here. And here. So this is the story, they were already on the path back home when they were taken."

  Isika saw what he meant. There were long stripes in the earth in places, as though something had been dragged through the dirt.

  "Why didn't they row up the river?" she asked.

  "The rescuers leave the long boats on the beach and walk back. It gives time for the rescued one to grow more comfortable with a small group, before entering a city full of thousands."

  Behind a rock, Isika saw a patch of color, and she cried out, running to pick it up. It was one of the sending cloths, one she had carefully placed around Kital's head in the small boat.

  "This is Kital's!" she said.

  Aria joined me. "His sending cloth," she said.

  "I'm surprised the rescuers kept it," Isika said.

  "They always do," she replied, her voice cool as usual. "As a reminder of what we came from, what we were saved from."

  Isika looked at her. "I'm so sorry, Aria," she said, putting a hand on her sister's arm. Aria stared down at Isika's hand on her arm, then slowly reached up and covered it with her own. She gave Isika's hand a brief squeeze, then let go. Isika's heart leapt up. It was something.

  "We go this way," Ivram said, indicating a narrow goat path that went up and over the rocks, toward the sea. "The tracks lead back toward the water."

  Isika walked behind her sister. Overhead, the Othra swept through the sky and Eemia sang a brief song. Isika watched everyone lift their heads as they felt the comfort of the huge bird's music.

  Isika climbed quickly, passing rangers on the rocks. If they were going to find Kital around the next curve, she wanted to be at the very beginning of the company that found him. There was an even smaller path that was parallel and went straight up instead of curving, and she walked along it, ignoring the teasing she heard behind her. She thought about how she would have climbed this path with the Workers, half-starved and exhausted, and she exulted in her new strength. She could have run straight up the hill, but she restrained herself to a walk. Behind her, the teasing changed to words of praise as she climbed up the faces of rocks with only shallow places for hands and feet. She seemed to know instinctively where to put her hands, and it seemed as though the rock helped her, giving her spaces for her feet to cling to, holding her up.

  "Isika climbs like a young kid," Ivram yelled from the path below. "Wait, young one, I'll climb with you, if you can give patience to an old goat."

  Isika slowed reluctantly. She could have scaled a mountain, feeling the way she did. While she waited for Ivram to catch up with her, she looked at her hands. They looked like the same hands she had always had, but they could do so much more. Every day she was stronger. She still had her hands held out in front of her when Ivram arrived.

  "I don't understand what is happening to me," she told him.

  CHAPTER 27

  Ivram and Isika walked side by side, slowly this time. To her right Isika saw a ranger checking the nearby rocks. Overhead the Othra scanned the landscape as well.

  Ivram seemed to know what she meant. "As far as I can tell," he said. "Your soul is returning to its proper home. You are becoming who you truly are, without shame or poison to hinder you. This seems to be your land, perhaps in a way that is deeper than any of us could know."

  Isika looked at him and saw the questions of the Queen's portrait in his eyes.

  "Please tell me about your mother," he said. "What did she tell you about her life? About her mother?"

  "She didn't tell us much," Isika said slowly. "I remember that her mother sang to her a lot, and that she was very tall. But she died when my mother was only ten."

  Out of the corner of her eye, Isika saw Ivram stop, and she turned to look at him. He held a hand to his face, and when he pulled his hand away, his eyes were wet. It hit her that maybe he had known the grandmother she had only ever heard about. He had been her friend.

  "Go on," he said, his voice hoarse with tears.

  "They lived in a city in the desert, the same place I remember living when I was very small, before Ibba was born." She paused, looking at the sky that didn't have even a hint of cloud, and the red of the rocks beneath them. "The walls in that city were very high. I don't think we could see outside the city."

  "Did your mother seem to have any… abilities?" Ivram asked. He walked with his hand lightly clasping his staff, and she didn't have to walk much slower for him. He walked like a much younger man, and he didn't lean on the staff. She could still see streaks of tears on his cheeks.

  "You mean like gifts?" Isika thought about it, then shook her head. "I don't remember anything. She seemed frail. But she had so many children, and I think she was still very young."

  "She would have only been thirty when she died," Ivram murmured, and Isika looked at him, startled. "If indeed she was our queen's daughter, I was there the day she was born. She must have had you when she was only twenty years old. Living among poison, with so many children, it's no wonder she seemed frail."

  Isika felt a painful flash of guilt for being one of the children who had weakened her mother.

  "How did you come to leave that place?" Ivram asked and Isika blinked back the tears that threatened to come, and pressed on her forehead with her hands, trying to push away the ache of losing her mother.

  "I think someone helped us. Someone my mother knew. The memory is fuzzy. There was a man, and we left at night. We walked and walked, for months and months, and we finally found the Worker village. My mother was strong on that journey, pregnant with Ibba and carrying Aria most of the way, but she was exhausted by the end, and she never really recovered."

  Isika paused and took a breath. "When Aria was given over, grief took the rest of her strength. She talked about a different way sometimes, she told me that the Worker way was not the only way to live. I didn't really understand what she meant, and I think she couldn't tell me. Her name was Amani."

  She looked at Ivram. Tears were openly streaming down his cheeks. "Was that your queen's baby's name?" she whispered.

  "No," he said. "Her name was Azariyah, like her mother before her. But it would have been giving away too much, to keep her royal name, the name of our beloved city. Her mother would have changed it to protect her."

  He stopped in the path, turned his face to the sky, and began to sing. Isika was growing used to the Maweel singing all the time, whenever they felt like it. Maybe it was too much, what Ivram felt, to simply think abo
ut, and he needed to sing to get the sadness out.

  Lost, we lost her.

  All of heaven grieves

  Take this sorrow

  Oh take this sorrow

  Bring back our beloved

  Lost, we lost her.

  Ivram wiped at his face and reached for Isika's hand. "I am almost certain," he said. "I'm nearly sure that you are Queen Azariyah's granddaughter." His staff flashed white again, and overhead, the Othra gave three long cries that raised the hair on Isika's arms and made her skin tingle. Her face flushed with heat.

  "Do you know what this means, child?" he asked. "You are her descendent. Our lost queen has come back to us."

  Isika shivered. She knew what he said was true. It had been growing in her from the day they entered the city. But she didn't know how to be a queen, and she recoiled from the thought of ruling anything. She felt small and broken from days and years of serving as a Worker. She shook her head swiftly.

  "I can't, Uncle. I—" He stopped her and put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently.

  "Don't think too much on it," he said. "We'll take it slowly. For now, let us find your little brother." He smiled. "We can't lose anyone else."

  That night they camped in the shelter of a tall red rock. Isika climbed it as the others made the camp, and as she looked, her sight seemed to fly far past what she should have been able to make out, so that in the distance she saw the sea and three large boats, perhaps half a day's journey away.

  "We will reach them tomorrow," she said when she came down from the rock. The others were sitting around the fire, and they looked at her, then at each other. Ivram bowed his gray head.

  "Very well," he said, not questioning how she knew. "We will be ready." He stared into the flames, both hands holding his silver wood staff. Aria and Jabari sat side by side looking over their arrows, talking quietly together. Isika felt a twinge of jealousy as she looked at them, though she couldn't say for what. Perhaps for the way they seemed to belong, to be natural together in a way she would never be. Aria's face when she looked at Jabari was so open, unlike when she looked at Isika and Ben and seemed to be keeping herself miles away.

  "What will we do when we find them?" Isika asked. "We won't hurt anybody, will we?"

  "Sometimes we must fight," Jabari said, "though we don't love it and don't want to cause pain."

  Isika couldn't stop thinking of herself as a Worker, toiling away in a system she hadn't known a way out of. The people who had stolen Kital—did they mean to be evil? She didn't know, and she fretted over the thought of hurting or killing anyone.

  Nirral flew into the camp and settled on a rock next to Isika. Efir winged down from a high place in the sky and joined him.

  To her surprise, they spoke so that only Isika could hear. She knew, she could see by the blankness in the other's faces and the echoes in her own mind, that she was the only one hearing their words.

  You will need to be very careful, child, Nirral said. The sea people have laid a poison that will attack your mind and the minds of your companions, setting one against the other.

  We tell you, Efir added, because as the World Whisperer, you will be the strongest against this poison.

  Isika spoke back to them from deep inside herself, not using words that others could hear, but shaping the words with her mind.

  World Whisperer?

  Ask the elder, Efir said, when you are alone.

  Nirral went on. The poison is very strong. There is something terrifying, something beyond the sea people alone. This is strong evil of Mugunta. Be aware. Be careful. You may be the only one who is able to withstand it.

  Isika wanted to ask more, but just then, Gavi spoke. "Are you talking to them Isika? Nirral, is she talking to you?" Nirral and Efir took off in a flurry of wings.

  Isika nodded briefly at him.

  "Did you see that?" Gavi asked Ivram. "Isika can mindspeak with the Othra. That's a life gift." Jabari scowled at his brother across the fire.

  "I saw it," Ivram replied. He smiled into the fire. "But you're about to let those potatoes burn, so maybe you should stick to worrying about your own gift, son."

  Gavi lunged at the potatoes, which were smoking at the edges, and the company finished their food quickly, turning in for the night. Isika's stomach was tight with fear over the Othra's warning. She felt as though the company was walking into a death trap. She was sure that she wouldn't be able to sleep, but somehow she drifted off.

  When she awoke, the moon had set and the sky was filled with diamonds. She wasn't sure what had wakened her until she heard whispers in the dark.

  "I don't know, Uncle. How can we be sure?"

  "I do know, young one. I'm as sure as I have ever been."

  "It bothers me. I worry that it's poison—demon magic. Look where she came from!"

  "Jabari, demon magic cannot commune with Othra. You know that as well as anybody."

  "No demon magic that we have seen before. What if it's different now?"

  "Go to sleep. You'll be tired enough tomorrow without wrestling over matters that have been set in their course from the beginning of time."

  "But—"

  "Sleep," Ivram said, and the command in his voice was so strong that Isika blinked under it. She lay in her bedroll feeling as though Jabari had hit her in the stomach. He thought she had demon magic? Did she? Her ears burned and tears ached behind her eyes, but she blinked hard, refusing to let them fall.

  She thought of Jabari reaching to pull her out of the river, of him saying, "You pulled the poison from the river into you!" Why was he doubting her now? Was it because he was the regent's son? She thought of the cold eyes of his mother. She wanted to be miles away from the camp, away from the hurt of his words, and she lay there with her heart and thoughts racing until the stars dimmed and the sun came up.

  As soon as she could see the shape of the rocks, she sat up in her bedroll and thought for a minute, then stood and packed her things into her sack. She walked away from the circle of sleeping bodies near the dying fire and climbed a short ledge that wasn't too far from where they had slept. The rocks began to glow as the sun climbed. She could see for miles. It was so beautiful it could have made her cry, but she didn't want any more tears. Today was the day. Perhaps the poison from the Great Waste would be enough to pull the company apart, perhaps they would all die trying to save her brother.

  She opened her mouth and sang. She sang a song of beginnings, of the first time the sun had risen on the newly made earth. She sang a song of thanks to the Uncreated One, recognizing it as something her mother had sung she was a child, though the words hadn't made sense to her then. She hadn't known what the silverwood trees were, or the crystalline water of a deep lake. She hadn't known about the red rocks and the blue of a clean sky. She had grown up in the desert, then moved to the dimness of the plains. She was being born anew, along with the earth as the sun rose again. When she stopped singing and looked down at the camp, she saw her sister looking up at her. Aria held her hand to her lips for just a moment and held it up to Isika, an old gesture from their mother. Isika grabbed at the air in front of her and brought it to her chest in response.

  CHAPTER 28

  The company set out after they had eaten a small breakfast of potatoes and fish from the night before.

  "Potatoes and fish," Ben muttered to Isika as they walked. She poked him in the ribs.

  "Are you really complaining about eating the same thing two days in a row?" she teased.

  He grinned at her. "I can't wait to find Kital and get back to Auntie's for more of her food," he said.

  She smiled at him, agreeing. Their smiles faded as they looked at each other.

  "We'll find him, Isika," he said.

  Isika stuck with Ben on the path, their shoulders touching occasionally. She needed to be around someone who believed in her, someone who knew her as she had been; just Isika, a hardworking girl with a sad life, someone who took care of people around her, someone who was tired and
frail, not a girl who could speak to animals and suck poison out of rivers.

  For the briefest of moments she longed for her space on the floor in the small house in the Worker village, for the comfort of gathering the losh wood in the mornings, for the one simple meal a day that only just kept them alive. Life had all become too much, and there wasn't any time to take it in.

  They walked without talking. Isika could hear the low tones of murmured conversation around her, but nothing loud enough to understand. She saw Gavi's blond head up ahead, the same height as Ivram's grizzled head beside him.

  Benayeem glanced at her and touched her arm.

  "How did you do that?" he asked quietly. "Speak to the Othra with your mind?"

  Isika smiled and wrinkled her nose. "How would I describe it?" she said. "It was like thinking, I guess, but with more push. And toward them." She thought about it, catching sight of his quiver on his back. "As though I could shape my thoughts into an arrow and shoot it."

  Ben nodded. "But how did you know how to do that?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know." She thought for a minute. "I think I would have enjoyed it more if they weren't offering such scary news."

  He laughed. "I can tell that you're not saying something," he said, one eyebrow raised in her direction.

  "What is this new ability to read minds?" she asked, reaching over to squeeze her brother's arm. "And this music? These tones that you've never told me about?"

  He lifted his arms and dropped them. "We didn't know anything like this existed, sister. I thought I was going mad. But don't change the subject. What are you not saying?"