“We want to hear everything,” Sam said. “Starting with what you told Ana last night. That you’re her army. Why? How?”
I frowned at him. There were more important things to ask the sylph—but maybe not to him.
Their song made me think of winter, cold and running and leaping. Trills and whistles, urging sounds like deceptively pleasant nightmares. The sylph songs smothered the night; not even the creek dared interrupt.
It took some sorting out to understand them. It wasn’t easy, though I was learning.
“One at a time.” My voice seemed harsh after the dulcet sylph songs. “Speak one at a time. I can’t understand all of you at once.”
Cris hmmed and came forward. -I was gone for so long because I was searching for the others.-
At last. Communication. “You brought them all together to be my army?”
He nodded. -When I left Heart, a few sylph found me. They befriended me, and I told them everything I knew. They told me they’d been watching you your entire life. They’ve been waiting for you.-
“Waiting for me to do what?” I stared at my knees. I couldn’t look at Cris and the others. Even now, I sensed them watching me.
-To stop Janan.-
13
BEFORE
WHAT MADE THEM think I could do anything?
-For a long time, sylph hoped you would come. They hoped you would see the truth about Janan. After thousands of years, many gave up that belief, but when they discovered you in Purple Rose Cottage, the news spread to all the sylph.-
“I don’t understand.”
-Phoenixes cursed the sylph. The only way to break the curse is to stop Janan from ascending. However, sylph are incapable of doing this on their own.-
“That doesn’t seem like a very fair curse.”
Cris trilled, like a laugh, and the others burned a little hotter. -No. But the phoenixes told them about the possibility of a newsoul, someone who could break the curse by stopping Janan. And all the sylph swore they would do anything to find this soul, keep it safe. They would do anything necessary to gain their redemption.-
Redemption. A theory tugged at me, but I’d think about it later.
-When you were an infant, all the sylph traps were removed from Purple Rose Cottage.-
Sam and I exchanged glances. “Li did it?” he asked. “Hoping Ana would ‘accidentally’ be killed by a sylph?”
Shadows rippled. Nods.
-But they knew you were different. They protected you. They kept your room warm in the winter, and siphoned out heat in the summer. They sang you to sleep when you cried.-
It seemed crazy, but Cris wouldn’t lie to me, and I had frequently dreamt of warm shadows. Maybe they hadn’t been dreams, after all.
“What about the attack on her birthday?” Sam asked. “And the day after, when a sylph burned her hands?”
-The sylph wanted to communicate. They saw Ana leave the cottage, saw that she was leaving for good. They thought she was ready to help stop Janan, so they followed and tried to sing with her. Instead she got scared and ran. If they’d wanted to hurt her, they would have done it while she was sleeping.-
“But they chased me.”
Cris shrank a little. -They got excited. After you threw yourself off a cliff to escape, they realized you’d been frightened. So the next day, they sent only one sylph. But then you wanted revenge and tried to trap their messenger, who was afraid of you by then. The intent was never to burn you. It was an accident.-
The song sounded pleading, but too easily I could remember running between trees and dodging brush. Nearly a year later, I could still feel my heart pounding with the terror, and still feel the inferno in my hands where they’d been burned.
It had been a long and awful recovery, and I’d spent months terrified of sylph. I’d worried they were after me, like dragons seemed to focus on Sam.
And all along they’d wanted to be my friend? They’d wanted me to save them?
“Is that why sylph allowed Menehem to experiment on them for so long?” I knotted my fingers together. “And why they chose not to burn him the day he discovered the poison? Because they wanted him to keep working?”
The shadows rippled again. Assent.
“Did it hurt?” The question was out before I realized.
A shudder ran through the ranks of sylph.
My voice thinned, barely a voice at all. “I’m sorry.”
One by one, sylph leaned close, brushed dry heat across my face. Nothing burned. It felt only like walking into a summer-baked room, sunlight all around.
Melancholy whispers made me think of leagues and leagues of golden sand, wind-rippled dunes like snowdrifts. They gave me images of turquoise water and heat-shimmering air, strange trees with wide fronds and peeling bark. Lizards scampered everywhere, giant turtles, flocks of white birds screeching. Sylph voices rushed and hissed like waves on the beach.
When they pulled back, I sighed and shivered. I wasn’t sure what that had been. A gift, maybe? But now that it was over, the cold air snaked in, even through the sylph.