“We’re never going to make it with enough of ourselves left if we do too much,” Ursula replied.
Sometimes Dhuuxo will give up, sometimes Ursula. Sometimes neither will, and it escalates into a screaming fight until Intisaar starts to cry. I’m afraid of her now, Ory. I’m afraid of Dhuuxo. When Lucius left the group and Ursula drove us out of Transcendence’s camp with an RV made from a cage and saved us, and something else, something I know I no longer remember, we all saw how much you could gain if you paid enough. I thought that because Dhuuxo came with us, she felt the same—that the price was too high. Maybe she did, I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t that Dhuuxo doesn’t want to resist, but that she can’t. I suppose it doesn’t matter. The result is the same. She’s letting go, more and more. Little things—changing the color of her clothes, changing the lengths of her intricate, tumbling braids, blooming flowers all along the sides of the road where there was nothing an instant before. The trees sing now, in a language I don’t understand. Slowly, bigger and bigger things, too. The strength of the warmth in the air. The brightness of the moon, so we can continue to drive even at night. At first Ursula didn’t say anything. She just looked at Intisaar every time something happened. Intisaar would nod back, to promise that she was watching Dhuuxo, that she wouldn’t let her fall too in love with the magic.
But every time it happens, Dhuuxo slips further and further away. She’s so far gone now that I don’t know if Intisaar can bring her back. Her only choice may be to let her go—or follow her.
I think we’re losing Wes, too. Now it’s the two of them always trying, studying this new world they can see—not the world that’s there but the world that could be—while Intisaar sits with her back against the back of my seat, watching them in terrified silence. Victor and Ysabelle have taken to yelling for Ursula every time they think Dhuuxo might be forgetting something, making that horrible trade. To warn her before it happens. The pull inside the little cabin is so strong now, it’s not just about her and Wes—every time Dhuuxo forgets something, she’s in danger of taking us with her too, even though we don’t want to go. Our RV often jerks to a stop in this winding wasteland, brakes screeching, Ursula climbing out of the driver’s seat like a provoked bear, roaring at them, shaking them by the shoulders, even hitting them, once.
“So help me God,” she snarled in Dhuuxo’s face. Dhuuxo strained to get away, and Ursula grabbed her braids at the base of her skull, pulled her face so close to her own and held it there that they could have kissed, if they hadn’t wanted to kill each other instead. “I will not let you endanger the rest of us, too. If you give up one more time, I will throw you out of this caravan. I will leave you behind.”
“Please,” Intisaar begged.
“Don’t be afraid,” Dhuuxo whispered. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Do it again and watch me keep my word,” Ursula said.
I held Intisaar in terror, waiting for something horrible. An absence, a shifting, an addition to reality. The only one strong enough to stop Dhuuxo if she tried something was Ursula, because they had both forgotten so much—but she would have to use the magic right back to thwart anything Dhuuxo tried to do, and none of us know how much Ursula has left. What if what it took from her was the memory of how to drive?
“I’m sorry,” Dhuuxo finally said. Her cheeks were wet then. “I don’t know if I can stop it.”
“You can,” Ursula said. She pointed at Dhuuxo’s twin sister, and they studied each other’s identical features. “You have to.”
She tried. Intisaar watched her, and Victor and Ysabelle watched Wes. We wound around the circular lands. Every revolution made them more and more agitated, as if each turn hurt.
“How much longer can it go on like this?” Intisaar asked Ursula softly one night as we drove under the glow of Dhuuxo’s unnaturally luminous moon. Everything shone silver, almost as bright as day.
“I don’t know,” Ursula said. “But there has to be an end.”
“Maybe it’s a test,” I offered. “Maybe whoever is waiting in New Orleans made the land like this so only those who really want to go will make it.”
“Maybe it’s a warning,” Dhuuxo said then. She wiped the sweat from her tired, furrowed brow. “Maybe they made it like this because they don’t want us to come.”
“No,” Ursula said. “The stories are about The Welcoming One, not The Unwelcoming One.”
On the fourth day, the road finally uncoiled into a straight, long line. We came around the last bend and all gasped. Ursula had to stop the RV for a moment so we all could take it in. An endless stretch of green with a single gray ribbon straight through it, extending out until it faded against the horizon.
“We made it,” I finally said. “We can’t be far.”
“I can’t see anything at all,” Ysabelle mused, squinting. “Just green.”