“The dayhunter,” Bernreb said.
“The dunderheaded dayhunter.” Tears glistened in the corners of Frog’s eyes but didn’t fall. “If the demon ’as took your fellow, too, then I am sorry for you, but it is not my fault.”
“We never said it was your fault.”
“’E will not guarantee my safety.” She pointed at Esse.
“He will,” Bernreb said. Esse’s gaze snapped angrily in his direction.
“Floorians take both of you, Bernreb, I—”
“Make a little room for me by the fire, brother.” Marram walked into the room, shivering, teeth chattering, and wingless. He must have left the chimera skin in the fishing room, unheard above all the shouting.
Esse crossed the floor and roughly embraced him.
“Who are you?” Marram asked Frog over Esse’s shoulder.
“I am Frog,” Frog said, her shoulders hunched defensively. “Will you give me monsoon-right now? Am I forgiven for whatever you think I have done, Heightsman?”
“You are small,” Marram said, moving past Esse to stretch his hands out to the flames. He gave Frog a sidelong glance, considering. “Small, and yet you have the spines implanted already.”
“Does anyone else wish to insult me?” Frog demanded angrily.
Marram grinned despite his chattering teeth.
“I am not insulting you,” he said. “Only thinking. I think I could teach you how to fly.”
THIRTY-THREE
UNAR’S EYES opened in the instant before the last, guttering tallow candle died.
Darkness filled the storeroom. Unar didn’t think it was daylight outside. In the ten days since coming to the hunters’ home, she’d adjusted to the strange cycle, sun unsighted, and her stomach, not quite ready to break fast, told her it was a few hours before dawn.
In ten days, she’d filled three of Esse’s nine sacks with twine. Oos had surpassed Marram’s level of skill on the thirteen-pipe flute. Frog had been forbidden by Esse to learn to fly and spent her days drying fish instead. Ylly spent them washing blankets and clothing, trading funny faces and noises with Issi, and trying to turn the nuts and grains that the brothers had in storage into an edible form of unleavened bread. Esse slept in the day and went out at night, keeping opposite hours to Marram and Bernreb.
Incredibly, Hasbabsah clung to life without waking.
Unar sat up in the pitch-blackness. Was Hasbabsah’s spirit leaving them? Was that why Unar had woken instinctively? Hope and dread filled her. Maybe she was adjusting to this new level of the forest, no matter how impossible it seemed. Maybe her ability to detect fading life was returning, which meant Hasbabsah was about to leave them.
Feeling her way with her feet into the workshop, which was also completely dark, Unar lifted the embroidered hanging that led to the hearth room. The coals were banked but the room remained comparatively bright and much warmer than even four sleeping bodies could make an enclosed space. There hadn’t been floor area in the storeroom for another bed for Frog, so the brothers had put her pallet in the hearth room by Hasbabsah’s chair.
Unar looked down at the curled lump beneath the blanket as she passed it. Frog’s breathing was slow and regular. She was sleeping.
Hasbabsah’s breathing was erratic and barely detectable. Unar knelt by her chair and took hold of her cold, wrinkled hand.
“Hasbabsah, I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m sorry for what your life has been like, and I’m sorry for how it’s ending. I thought I was saving you. I tried to save you.”
She swallowed, feeling the smoothness of her tongue on her hard palate, thinking about the markings the goddess Audblayin had allowed to be placed on Hasbabsah’s tongue. Unar had believed her goddess was wholly good, but now she couldn’t be sure of that.
No, Audblayin was good. He—she—had to be. It was the Servants who were stupid. The wasteful habits of Servants could be changed. They would change, when Unar returned to Canopy.
“I was stupid,” she went on, holding harder to the rough palm. “I made mistakes. I’ll do better. Your friend’s daughter, Ylly, is free, now, isn’t she? I promise I’ll do everything I can to free Sawas and baby Ylly as well. I’m sure wife-of-Epatut is treating them well.”
Unar paused and shook her head. She couldn’t be sure of that, at all. She was being stupid again.
“I wish I could help you.” Reluctantly, she let go of Hasbabsah’s hand. It felt like she was letting go of her at the edge of the Garden, leaving her to fall to Floor. Frustration crept into her voice. “I wish Esse would let Frog learn to fly, so that she could fetch medicines, or that Oos would teach me what I need to know to heal you.”
“Oos cannot teach you,” Frog said, and Unar’s head whipped around to find the skinny girl kneeling beside her, a strange gleam in her eyes. “Oos does not know. But I do.”
Unar reared back from her.
“What are you talking about?”
“Hush! Do not wake them. I have been waitin’ for you to come alone. Oos would sense it, the thing I wishta show you, and she must not. She must believe that ’er mind merely itches in ’er dreams, that it was ’er own yearnin’ and nothing more that she felt. Lately I ’ave thought the old woman would die while I waited. You are so slow. So dank.”
Unar had never considered herself slow. Her powers had woken before she’d even reached the Garden. Every trick the other Gardeners had shown her she’d learned instantly. More, she’d gone beyond them. She’d gone beyond the Servants, those fools who hadn’t chosen her. Absolute was her belief that the rules that applied to others didn’t apply to her.
I am not slow. Or dank. Whatever that is.
She peered at Frog. Their faces were close. Frog reminded her of someone, but who?
“What do you wish to show me? It had better not be handstands or shadow puppets or any of the things you showed Bernreb.”
Frog held up Marram’s flute in the firelight.
“Can you play this?”
“I’m going back to bed.”
“Of course you cannot play it.” Frog’s eyes still shone. Her mouth was small and stern. So unlike a child’s.
The thought came to Unar: Desperate circumstances have made this girl into something unusual. Perhaps extraordinary. Just like me. The child went on. “Music is not allowed in the Garden. They did not tell you why, did they? Maybe they did not even tell Servant Oos.”
“Music is the province of Orin, the bird goddess. Music in the Garden would be trespass in the territory of a rival deity.”
“That is not why,” Frog hissed. “Music is the lifeblood of all magic, but it can be borrowed from the gifted, and Audblayin’s Servants would not want that, would they? No! Magic, access to the gods, whatever you wanna call it, is only for them, not for filthy Understorian maggots to have or to use! Their precious barrier blocks the movements of large livin’ things, but it does not block music, does it?”
“You make no sense. Calm yourself. There’s no magic in music. Green things grow in silence.”
Frog thrust the instrument into Unar’s hands.
“Play something. I will show you. Play it loudly. Play it badly. I do not care. I know you are not the one who has been takin’ lessons, but as dank as you are, I am sure you can put your lips to it and make sounds come out.”
“You hushed me only moments ago.”
“Now I am tellin’ you to play.”
Unar narrowed her eyes at the girl, but she put the flute to her pursed lips and sent her breath over the row of pipes.
Nothing. No sounds came out. Unar could hear the soft crackle of the fire, Hasbabsah’s faint and irregular wheeze, and water falling in the fishing room, but no matter how hard she blew, the pipes stayed silent.
Frog’s eyes had lost their light. No, it was that her skull had started glowing. The same ghostly luminescence that lit the room under the river outlined the girl’s skeleton, shining through her clothes. Unar could see her teeth through her closed mouth.
> Then came that same strange, weightless feeling from before, on the brink of sleep. Like her body was dissolving and she was becoming part of the very air.
Startled, she let the flute drop into her lap.
“Do not stop,” Frog insisted, the glow fading so that the whites of her eyes emerged from the place where two black holes had been. “The spell is not finished. Play on.”
At once frightened and exhilarated—she was right, the magic here was in a person’s very bones—Unar took Hasbabsah’s hand again, finding it warm and the pulse strong. Greedy to wield her own power, herself, she demanded, “How are you using it? How are you borrowing it from me?”
“Play on, I said. Your friend, the Servant, is stirrin’. This is not for ’er to see. Not ever.”
“Why not?”
“I will give no weapons to my enemy.” Frog’s grimace was back. “Your friend is more a slave than this old woman ever was. Listen, Unar, you wished to heal this one. To help ’er, to repay what your people did to ’er. At least, you said so. I do not think you lied. This is your last chance.”
Unar filled her lungs. She raised the flute. It made no sound, no matter what she did with it, no matter how she blew into the thinnest, shortest hollow, the thickest, longest one, or any of the whittled wooden chambers in between.
“Is it morning?” Hasbabsah cried, startling and stirring, unable to open her gummed lids. “Am I blind?”
Unar tried to set the flute aside, but Frog snatched it from her hands.
“It’s a few hours before dawn,” Unar told Hasbabsah, grasping the old woman by her flailing arms. “You haven’t opened your eyes for many nights. I’ll bring you water and a cloth.”
“Ylly?” Hasbabsah croaked.
“I’m Unar. Ylly’s sleeping.”
Oos pushed through the embroidered hanging and gasped when she saw Hasbabsah.
“Is she awake? Is she getting better? Unar, what did you do?”
In the corner of her eye, Unar saw that Frog had returned to her pallet, curled under the blanket, breathing evenly as though she’d never left her bed.
“Nothing,” Unar said. “I did nothing.”
She gazed for a long moment at Oos, wondering why a child who had fallen from Canopy would name a Servant of Audblayin her enemy.
“You tried something,” Oos said.
“I try lots of things. I tried to be your friend.”
Oos swallowed. Her eyes grew round. They glittered. Her dark hair fell over her shoulder in a loose braid twined with ribbons. Marram must have given them to her. She wore her Servant’s robe, which she’d scrubbed as hard as she could, but the stains were still there.
“You saved me from the dayhunter. I never thanked you. I’m sorry. I’m thanking you now.”
“You’re welcome,” Unar said. “That’s what friends do.”
When Oos had gone, Unar sat on the floor beside Frog, cross-legged.
“You can stop pretending to be asleep. Oos is gone. And I’m curious to know why you called her your enemy but revealed yourself to me. You have magic. You serve a deity.”
That brought Frog, ferocious-eyed, out from under her blanket.
“I serve no deity!”
“Then how did you do that? Why did you do that?”
Frog’s gaze became unfocused, as if her thoughts dwelled on something distant and unpleasant. She shook herself, coming to a decision.
“We will speak of the how,” she said, “but not yet. As for the why, it was the way you jumped onto that demon’s back. It should have eaten you. You should have died. You made me think of a mother yellow-bellied glider I found once, in a hollow-tree nest with ’er litter.”
“A what?”
“Do you not know them? Do Warmed Ones have no use for furs? Them gliders with the rich pelts, fluffy tails, and wicked ivory claws. They are only so big”—Frog made a circle of her arms, like a pregnant woman’s belly—“but they have extra skin for glidin’ and the fur stretches to a proper-sized blanket for a grown woman’s bed. I tried to take the babies. The mother glider scratched me up, bitin’, tryin’ to lead me away. I did not want to cut ’er and ruin the pelt, but even after I blinded ’er and cut off ’er claws, she would not stop.”
Unar shifted uncomfortably. She’d killed animals before, but never tortured them. Frog, still staring into her past, went heedlessly on with her story.
“I returned to my new mother and asked ’er if she would do that for me. If a demon came, would she die tryin’ to defend me? And my new mother said no, she would not.”
Frog laughed quietly, closed her eyes, and shook her head.
Unar thought, My mother wouldn’t have suffered for me, either. She expected me to suffer for her.
“’Er answer did not please me,” Frog said. “I sulked until she told me my birth mother had not loved me more. Did I need proof? She told me where to go. Close to the barrier. Close to the crumblin’, worm-ridden branches where my birth mother resided. It was not Oxor’s magic that showed me the woman who gave me life, but Akkad’s magic, for my new mother knew the truth. My birth mother did not love me, yet I was fruit from ’er tree.”
“You saw your Canopian birth mother through the barrier?”
“I heard ’er, first,” Frog whispered, her gaze distant once again, hands still beneath the blanket. “Vomitin’. She vomited up ’er breakfast onto a branch below. Mushrooms she must have known were not safe to eat. She was skinny. Starving. And then she and the man who was my father fought to gather up the vomit and to eat it again.”
Unar was horrified. She reached for Frog’s shoulder, to comfort her, but the girl flinched away. Then something occurred to Unar.
“You called me a Warmed One. You asked if Warmed Ones had any use for furs. If you don’t serve a deity, if you don’t remember your life in Canopy, if you needed magic to find your birth mother, how could you know I was a Warmed One?”
Frog rolled her eyes.
“A slug with a skerrick of sensitivity would know.”
Unar said nothing, hungry to hear more, wanting Frog to say that Unar’s greatness shone around her like the halo of light around a lantern. But when the child spoke again, all she said was “I am tired. Leave me alone.” She lay back down and pulled her blanket up over her head. “You love your friend. You jumped on a demon’s back to save ’er. But she would not do the same for you. Next time, save your sacrifice for someone worthy. Unreturned love is for fools.”
THIRTY-FOUR
NINE BAGS full.
Unar stood and stretched, knuckling the small of her back.
“Where are you going?” Frog asked.
“To ask Esse for my knife back,” Unar replied.
“He is sleepin’. We are not allowed in that room.”
“I’m going to wake him.” Unar smiled tightly. She’d been looking forward to this moment. With her knife in hand, she could whittle a flute of her own. She could work out what it was that Frog had done and do it herself.
She hadn’t been alone with Frog since the night of Hasbabsah’s recovery, not properly. Not with Oos slumbering and so insensible to the use of magic. When Unar asked questions, Frog only glared at her, tight-lipped, and made a sleeping gesture; she would not discuss her power or who had taught her to use it until everyone else was asleep.
Unar went into the hearth room, where Hasbabsah lectured a reluctant Oos and an eager Ylly. Issi crawled around on a blanket on the side of the great table that was away from the fire, clinging to chair legs, drooling and biting the wood, occasionally trying to pull herself up.
“Have you two come to join my classroom at last?” Hasbabsah asked drily.
In the wake of her near death, Hasbabsah had taken to teaching the other two women everything she knew about medicinal plants. Her knowledge was not inconsequential; as an Understorian warrior, she had learned field medicine, and once a slave of the Garden, she couldn’t help but expand on what she’d been taught. She said that Ylly and Oos would never
be warriors, so that they might as well learn something useful to trade in at the little villages where they must soon settle.
Oos still resisted the idea of living in Understorey, but was easily bullied by Hasbabsah, while Ylly’s shoulders grew straighter and her chin lifted higher every day. Frog excused herself from the classes, saying she was a hunter and would trade for medicines if she needed them, and Marram and Bernreb looked appraisingly at her but did not contradict her.
Unar knew what had healed Hasbabsah, and it wasn’t herbs. She glanced back at Frog.
“Where are you going?”
“To watch you wake up Esse.”
Hasbabsah cleared her throat. “As I was saying. If the men had known the uses of this tree, their own home, they could have crushed the tallowwood leaves between two stones and rubbed the liquid on my chest to ease the coughing.”
Marram was nowhere to be seen. Unar supposed Bernreb was still busy skinning his latest kill, something large and brown with pendulous arms, in the fishing room.
“Except that the leaves are up in Canopy,” Frog said quietly, under her breath. Not quietly enough. Hasbabsah answered her.
“Not all of them. Low lateral branches have leaves, too. As for the tree that you came from, little Canopy-fruit, it is good medicine, too. Have you never heard of yellowrain tea? But all that our brave hunters could think to do with that priceless crown was cut it off and let it fall.”
“The crown was already cut,” Esse said, emerging from the hanging that led to his sleeping room, rubbing his head and looking out of sorts as always. “And I have heard of yellowrain tea. It is dangerous. Makes a man bleed on the inside. Turns his stool black.”
“Am I a man?” Hasbabsah scoffed. “By the bones!”
“You would be better off teaching them how to sand floors and stuff mattresses. That is all they will ever be fit for.”
“I will decide what they are fit for.”
“They are fit for boiling water. Bring me a full kettle, Gardener. Right now.”
Unar stared back at him, fists on hips.
“No. I’ve filled your nine bags with twine. Right now I want my knife back. You agreed.”
Crossroads of Canopy Page 17