The swallow knew those voices. It fluttered closer to get a better look.
The second voice flew away and returned, skidding on the back of the owner of the first voice. The first voice had many arms and a long tail and a great, broad head. It had a slow bearing to it, like an enormous sycamore tree. A tree that moved. The swallow moved closer. The great many-armed and tailed tree-creature paused. Looked around. Wrinkled its brow.
“Xan?” it said.
The swallow held very still. It knew that name. It knew that voice. But how? It couldn’t remember.
The second voice returned.
“There are things in the woods, Glerk. I found a chimney. And a wall. And a small house. Or it was a house, but now it has a tree in it.”
The first voice didn’t answer right away. It swung its head very slowly from side to side. The swallow was behind a thicket of leaves. It hardly breathed.
Finally the first voice sighed. “You were perhaps seeing one of the abandoned villages. There are many on this side of the woods. After the last eruption, the people fled, and were welcomed into the Protectorate. That’s where the magicians gathered them. Those who were left, anyway. I never knew what happened to them after that. They couldn’t come back into the woods, of course. Too dangerous.”
The creature swung its great head from side to side.
“Xan has been here,” it said. “Very recently.”
“Is Luna with her?” the second voice said. “That would be safer. Luna can’t fly, you know. And she is not impervious to flames like Simply Enormous Dragons. That is well-known.”
The first voice groaned.
And, all at once, Xan knew herself.
Glerk, she thought. In the woods. Away from the swamp.
Luna. All on her own.
And there was a baby. About to be left in the forest. And I have to save it, and what on earth am I doing, dilly-dallying here?
Great heavens. What have I done?
And Xan, the swallow, burst from the thicket and soared over the trees, beating her ancient wings as best she could.
The crow was beside himself with worry. Luna could tell.
“Caw,” the crow said, and meant, “I think we should turn back.”
“Caw,” he said again, which Luna took to mean, “Be careful. Also, are you aware that rock is on fire?” And so it was. Indeed, there was an entire seam of rock, curving into the damp and deeply green forest, glowing like a river of embers. Or perhaps it was a river of embers. Luna checked her map. “River of Embers,” the map said.
“Ah,” Luna said. And she tried to find a way around.
This side of the forest was far more rageful than the section that she usually traveled.
“Caw,” the crow said. But Luna didn’t know what it meant.
“Speak more clearly,” she said.
But the crow did not. He spiraled upward, perched briefly at the topmost branch of an enormous pine. Cawed. Spiraled down. Up and down and up and down. Luna felt dizzy.
“What do you see?” she said. But the crow wouldn’t say.
“Caw,” the crow said, swooping back over the tops of the trees.
“What has gotten into you?” Luna asked. The crow didn’t say.
The map said “Village,” which should have been visible just over the next ridge. How could anyone actually live in this forest?
Luna traversed the slope, watching her footing, as the map advised.
Her map.
She had made it.
How?
She had no idea.
“Caw,” the crow said. “Something coming,” it meant. What could possibly be coming? Luna peered into the green.
She could see the village, nestled in the valley. It was a ruin. The remains of a central building and a well and the jagged foundations of several houses, like broken teeth in neat, tidy squares. Trees grew where people had once lived, and low plants.
Luna curved around the mud pot and followed the rocks into where the village used to be. The central building was a round, low tower with curved windows looking outward, like eyes. The back portion had fallen off, and the roof had caved in. But there were carvings in the rock. Luna approached it and laid her hand on the nearest panel.
Dragons. There were dragons in the rock. Big dragons, small dragons, dragons of middling size. There were people with quills in their hands and people with stars in their hands and people with birthmarks on their foreheads that looked like crescent moons. Luna pressed her fingers to her own forehead. She had the same birthmark.
There was a carving of a mountain, and a carving of a mountain with its top removed and smoke billowing outward like a cloud, and a carving of a mountain with a dragon plunging itself into the crater.
What did it mean?
“Caw,” said the crow. “It’s nearly here,” he meant.
“Give me a minute,” Luna said.
She heard a sound like rustling paper.
And a high, thin keen.
She looked up. The crow sped toward her, flying in a tight, fast twist, all black feathers and black beak and panicked cawing. It reared, flipped backward, and fluttered into her arms, nestling its head deeply into the crook of her elbow.
The sky was suddenly thick with birds of all sizes and descriptions. They massed in great murmurations, expanding and contracting and curving this way and that. They called and squawked and swirled in great clouds before descending on the ruined village, chirping and fussing and circling near.
But they weren’t birds at all. They were made of paper. They pointed their eyeless faces toward the girl on the ground.
“Magic,” Luna whispered. “This is what magic does.”
And, for the first time, she understood.
33.
In Which the Witch Encounters an Old Acquaintance
When Xan was a little girl, she lived in a village in the forest. Her father, as far as she could remember, was a carver. Of spoons, primarily. Animals, too. Her mother gathered the flowers of particular climbing vines and sapped them of their essences and combined them with honey that she pulled from the wild hives in the tallest trees. She would climb to the tops, as nimble as a spider, and then send the honeycombs down in baskets on ropes for Xan to catch. Xan was not allowed to taste. In theory. She would anyway. And her mother would climb down and kiss the honey from her little-girl lips.
It was a thing she remembered with a stab in her heart. Industrious people, her parents. Fearless. She couldn’t recall their faces, but she remembered the feeling she had when she was near them. She remembered their smells of tree sap and sawdust and pollen. She remembered the curl of large fingers around her small shoulder and of her mother’s breath as she rested her mouth at the top of Xan’s head. And then they died. Or vanished. Or they didn’t love her and they left. Xan had no idea.
The scholars said they found her in the woods all alone.
Or, one of them did. The woman with the voice like cut glass. And a heart like a tiger. She was the one who brought Xan to the castle, all those years ago.
Xan rested her wings in the hollowed-out nook of a tall tree. It would take her forever to make it to the Protectorate at this rate. What had she been thinking? An albatross would have been a much better choice. All she’d have had to do is lock her wings in place and let the wind do the rest.
“No matter now,” she chirped in her bird-voice. “I’ll make it there as best I can. Then I’ll return to my Luna. I’ll be there when her magic opens up. I’ll show her how to use it. And who knows? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe her magic will never come. Maybe I won’t die. Maybe a lot of things.”
She helped herself to a portion of the ants swarming the outside of the tree, looking for something sweet. It wasn’t much, but it satisfied the edges of her hunger. Puffing her feathers out for warmth, Xan closed her eyes and fell asleep.
The moon rose, heavy and round as a ripe squash, over the tops of the trees. It fell on Xan, waking her up.
“Thank you,” she whispered, feeling the moonlight sink into her bones, easing her joints and soothing her pain.