“You’re afraid of the forest floor, but not of this?” Naelin asked.
From above her, she heard Sira’s tinkling laugh. “Ven told you that story, did he? I’ll happily walk on the ground, but only when it holds an interesting story to sing. Right now, the best stories are up in the trees.”
Naelin climbed higher until she was above the canopy. Her hands and feet splayed wide on four different branches to keep her balance.
She felt the sun on her back before she saw it.
“Look, it’s nearly set.” Sira’s voice was filled with reverence, and then she lifted her face toward the soft rose light and began to sing. From across the canopy, other distant voices melded with hers—her melody wrapped around another’s, at first discordant then blending together, the notes dancing around one another, touching and breaking apart.
Naelin heard a touch of sadness inside the sweet melody, and at first she thought she’d imagined it, but then the minor notes began to pile on top of one another, sung in Sira’s sweet voice and echoed by the countless other canopy singers across the roof of Aratay. The dying sun hit the yellows and reds of the autumn leaves, and fire spirits danced in the light, and then the sun sank and spread into the west.
A single note, low and vibrating, sang out as the final drop of gold disappeared. Naelin felt the note deep in her bones. And then the note soared up and up, higher, and Sira pointed to the east, where a single star shone, bright against the deep blue. “I call the first star Hope,” Sira said. She then pointed to a faint dot in the northeast, a hand’s spread away from the first star. “And the second star Courage.”
“That’s lovely,” Naelin said.
“It’s from the Song of the First, about the first queen of Renthia, who looked to the sky for hope and courage in the days when the land was only wildness.” She looked shyly at Naelin. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.” Naelin wondered if it was going to be about her and Ven.
“All the rumors said that when your children were attacked, the wolf Bayn was driven into the untamed lands. How could that be? I know the creatures of the forest, and no animal would willingly cross into the untamed lands.”
“He ran into the untamed lands to escape.” Naelin sighed, thinking of the wolf who had been a guardian and friend to her children—and to me. “He probably died soon after he crossed. At least, I’ve never heard of anyone surviving the untamed lands.” Still . . . she wanted to hope. After all, he wasn’t like other ordinary animals. Crossing into the untamed lands wasn’t the first unusual thing he’d done. He always seemed to know exactly what they were saying and what they needed. “Have you ever heard of any animals coming out of the untamed lands?”
“No.” And then she brightened. “But I do know songs about the untamed lands.”
“Could you sing one for me?”
“They’re mostly sad. You might prefer a happier song. I know lots about the night sky, and travelers who found their way home. Or I could sing you one about Ven, if you’d like. It embarrasses him, but I like it. I wrote it.”
Naelin was sure it did embarrass him, but she was equally sure he’d never stop his sister from singing it. Not if it made her happy. “What was he like as a child?”
“Always serious. Always trying so hard. I think he believes that if he’s strong enough and fights hard enough and runs fast enough and leaps high enough, death won’t catch him. Mother believes that too. She taught it to him.”
“But not to you?”
Sira lifted her arms up, letting go of the thin branch she’d held. “I know we’re all stardust, shining in the darkness for a while then winking out. I’m not afraid of dying.” She said it so matter-of-factly, and she looked so fey, a blue shadow against the even darker blue sky, that Naelin believed her.
Naelin looked to the north. “I used to be afraid of so many things. But everything changed when Erian and Llor were taken.”
“I felt the world change when they were lost,” Sira said.
“Thank you.” It seemed the right thing to say. But she couldn’t stop thinking about Bayn. “You said the songs you knew about the untamed lands were ‘mostly’ sad. Are there any that aren’t?” It would be nice if she could think the wolf was all right. He had tried so hard to protect Erian and Llor.
Opening her mouth, Sira began to sing again, this time with words that flowed out of her like a waterfall:
Beginning—
We are here in the darkness, unfolding.
Opening—
We are waking in the wildness, molding
Ourselves into shapes with names.
Speaking—
Not alone, we answer, echo, echo,
We tell the nothingness we came,
And it embraces us, unfolds us, molds us, names us.
And then her voice shifted, becoming a tone that did not sound human, and Naelin shivered at how closely she echoed the odd cadence of a spirit:
You, who have come where you do not belong,
You, who have come before your time,
You, who were formed from the formless,
You, who have called out your name,
When you should have been nameless,
We will rip you, rend you, tear you from our world,
Heal what you have sickened—
“I thought this one wasn’t a sad song,” Naelin murmured.
Sira looked startled, as if Naelin had poured water on her head. She broke off her song. “Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t think! It has hope at the end—the First, our first queen, wasn’t alone. When all seemed lost and the few people who were left alive were surrounded by spirits bent on their deaths, the First went back into the untamed lands, where we were formed, to pray to the Great Mother, and when the First came out again, she was accompanied by a Protector.”
“She went into the untamed lands and came out again?” Naelin repeated. She’d never heard a tale like that. “But that’s not possible. No one’s ever done that.”
“It’s a very old song. It wouldn’t surprise me if only canopy singers know it.”
“And who was the ‘Protector’?” I’ve heard that term before . . . Queen Merecot’s letter, she remembered, the ransom note. She’d called Bayn the “Protector of Queens.” No one had known what that meant, and Naelin hadn’t thought about it much at the time. She’d been too caught up absorbing the implications of Queen Merecot’s letter to think about the wolf. Odd that the word is associated both with Bayn and this tale of the untamed lands. “What do you know about the ‘Protector’? Who was he or she?”
Sira thought, tapping her lips with her forefinger. “A few songs mention him—always a him—at the side of the First. Other singers have told me he was the first champion, and that the title simply changed over the years. Except there was only ever one Protector in the songs, and there are many champions. There are those who believe he was a kind of enlightened spirit—or an uncorrupted one, a spirit the way the spirits were supposed to be if the Great Mother had completed her work, devoted to humans instead of despising them, at one with Nature.”
That didn’t make sense, Naelin thought, at least when it came to Bayn. She’d never heard of an “enlightened spirit.” And the wolf was obviously not a champion.
“There are also songs that hint the Protector is some kind of immortal, or that he bears an immortal destiny, but those singers were known for being caught up in the beauty of their own poetry, so that could be exaggeration. Do you want to know what I think?” She leaned closer as if she wanted to impart a secret. Her eyes were sparkling and her lips were smiling.
“Yes, I do. Tell me.”
“I think the Protector was the First’s lover.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I think he wasn’t protecting Aratay; I think he was protecting the queen. I think he was more than the first champion. And do you know what else I think?” She lowered her voice even further. “I think Ven is your Protector. He loves you. I can see it. Feel it. He would set aside his fear of death for you. He would follow you into death.”