The old woman was agitated. “T’eu veraktu,” she said.
T’eu meant “you are” in Fojuen, but Mia didn’t recognize the other word. She’d always excelled at language studies; she hated not knowing the answer.
“Nanu!” The girl who had won the race wheeled up to them, maneuvering her low, triangular wicker chair with a mechanical hand crank. The victory sweat had furled her fine black curls into a puffed halo at her hairline; she reached up to smooth the edges. The girl’s large brown eyes regarded the old woman with both love and frustration.
“You slipped away from me again, Nanu. Are you causing trouble?”
She began prying the woman’s fingers from Mia’s shirt. “I’m sorry. This happens sometimes—my grandmother gets agitated. I promise she doesn’t mean anything by it.”
The girl peered up at Mia for the first time. A smile broke over her face.
“Mia Rose!”
She couldn’t believe it. This was Sach’a, Dom’s baby sister. Mia hadn’t seen the twins since they were nine years old, not since their mother packed them up and fled the river kingdom overnight.
Mia was astonished by how much the girl had grown in three years. She was virtually unrecognizable. Sach’a carried herself with the poise and gravitas of a young woman.
“Mam?e is going to be so happy to see you . . .”
Nanu wheezed and mumbled incoherent words. Sach’a sighed. “Forgive me, Mia. This will only take a minute.” She pulled her grandmother’s face down close to hers and cupped her hands around the old woman’s skull, digging her thumbs into the cavities of her brow bone.
The air around them rippled. Mia felt two pocks of pressure behind her own brow; an echo of the girls’ thumbprints on her ethmoid, the bone bridging nose and cranium.
When Mia found her breath, she gaped at Nanu. The woman was serene, her mouth still, a faint smile on her lips. She uncrooked her back and patted her granddaughter affectionately on the head.
Sach’a nodded, pleased. “Sorry about that,” she said to Mia. “She just gets confused. But once I calm the nerves in her brain, she’s the sweetest thing in the world.”
Mia’s world was spinning. “How did you do that?”
“That? It’s just a little head magic. Unblooding for the brain. Mam?e says no Dujia my age can do it.” She sat a little taller in her chair. “But I can.”
Since when did Sach’a have magic?
“Mia!” Quin reappeared holding two roasted bird legs. He held one out to her. “Hungry?”
“How did you get those?”
“I bartered.”
“With what? Don’t say gold buttons.”
From the look on his face, the answer was definitely gold buttons.
Sach’a looked up at Quin, then Mia, then back at Quin. She dipped her head respectfully. “Your Grace.”
Even disheveled and half frostbitten after a week in the woods, bereft of his gold buttons and regal pout, Quin looked every bit a prince.
“Are we safe here, Sach’a?” Mia asked.
“You are,” she said to Mia. She sized up Quin, started to say something, then stopped. “It’s just, you’re the first Glasddiran man I’ve seen in three years, Your Grace. We’re not exactly . . .”
She fiddled with the crank on her chair, then sighed. “Why don’t you both come with me? I’ll take you to Mam?e.”
Chapter 34
Forbidden
WITH HER GRANDMOTHER SHUFFLING alongside them, Sach’a led them through the merqad, where Mia saw all the things she’d missed.
She saw a fair-skinned woman in a crisp, unstained apron, wheat-colored hair swept into a loose bun. The woman drew a bird from a wooden crate and placed it on a butcher block. Instead of wringing its neck, she laid her pale, unfreckled hands over its heart. Without a sound or a single flap of its wings, the bird stilled.
She saw a little girl with thin beaded braids crying over a skinned knee, the blood oozing dark from the fresh wound, until a stout woman with mellow gold skin and a kind face placed a hand on the girl’s kneecap and her sobs turned to hiccups. When the woman wiped off the old blood, the girl didn’t even wince. Her knee was healed, copper skin glowing warm and unbroken, as if kissed by a forgiving sun.
Was everyone here a Gwyrach?
Mia oscillated wildly between euphoria and shock. Years of lies—Gwyrach never use their powers to heal, Gwyrach are demons who enjoy causing suffering and pain—were toppled in an instant. The merqad was flooded with light and laughter and music. In the distance, Mia heard the airy strand of a viol blending with a girl’s silvery voice. Everyone seemed happy and joyous, with the exception of the woman who had killed the bird. Her face was solemn and respectful.
The more women Mia saw, the more she felt she somehow knew them, as if an invisible thread bound them all together. She saw mothers, daughters, sisters, lovers, and friends, as vibrant as they were different—young and old, fat and skinny, beautiful and ugly, and a hundred variations in between.
But what struck her most were their hands.
Growing up in Glas Ddir, she had only ever seen three pairs of hands without gloves: her mother’s, her sister’s, and her own. Here in Refúj, every woman’s hands were bare. Mia saw a profusion of freckles, moles, birthmarks, and scars set against backdrops of warm russet brown, milky white, pale bronze, and glimmering ebony. She saw long, curling fingernails and nails trimmed short; palms thatched with lines and creases; light ink etched on dark skin, dark ink etched on light skin. She saw women with their fingers laced together or their arms linked, and in one corner stall, two girls stood with their bodies pressed close, raking hungry hands through each other’s sleek raven tresses as they kissed.
And it wasn’t just the hands. Women sported silky straight locks, coarse black plaits, blond ringlets, and shaved heads—an abundance of hair coiffed, curled, and shorn. Everyone was draped in a dizzying array of fabrics, cuts and styles Mia had never seen in Glas Ddir, and as she pushed through throngs of girls, her ears drank in the sweet cacophony of languages.
“I dreamed of a place like this,” she said, remembering. During the wedding, Mia had stood in the Royal Chapel and seen these colors, heard these sounds, inhabited this place. She’d just never expected it to be filled with Gwyrach.
“I couldn’t have dreamed up a place like this in a million years,” Quin said. “And I have an active imagination.”
Mia knew what he meant. She had never imagined so many rich cultures melding together in one place. For the first time she understood the true cost of King Ronan’s policies: he had drained the river kingdom of the energy and life that once flowed through it, like a body drained of blood.
“When your father closed the borders,” she said, “he didn’t just erase these places from our maps. He erased them from our minds.”
The sound of singing grew louder. At the end of the avenue, they passed a flapping flag with a midnight-blue bird rising from red flames. Phénix Blu, it said. “The Blue Phoenix.” Behind the flag stood a hearty three-walled tavern where women sat in chairs and reclined in the scarlet sand. The patrons sang heartily around a roaring fire, holding pints and squat glasses of a drink Mia couldn’t identify, an amber liquid speckled red. They all seemed to know the song by heart, even as the words slurred together. Intermingled with the women were three men and a couple of boys; the first males Mia had seen in Refúj. She found it jarring.
She almost laughed. How was it the presence of men jarred her, but not the Gwyrach? Amazing how quickly she had adjusted. Alarming too. And yet, if she stayed grounded in her body, she felt no alarm. Only curiosity—and a quiet giddiness building slowly in her sternum.
“But I don’t understand,” Mia asked Sach’a. “Do all these women have magic?”
“Most of them, yes. The ones who don’t have magic came here with someone who did.”
“What about the men?”
Sach’a laughed. “Men are not prohibited in Refúj. But they must come here with their Dujia mothers or sisters or wives. They must be deemed safe.”