It was Esse. His long legs didn’t fit. They hung off the edge of the ledge.
“Move over, little tree bear,” he muttered, and squeezed her deeper into the crevice, so that he could fold his limbs in beside her. “It is cold outside, even if Sawas and Bernreb do not feel it.”
Quiet for a while. Sharing the air. Heat, from Esse’s body. Moaning, from the main part of the room.
“Let Marram pretend he does not mind the cold and wet,” Esse growled. “This is my house. I am not leaving just because she says she cannot relax if people are listening. She should be quieter, then, should she not? I brought us here. I made the very first mark in the bark.”
Esse, breathing. Bodies in Bernreb’s bed, breathing. High above Canopy, the leaves of the great tree, breathing.
*
YOU SPEAK to the dead, Frog sighed. Well, the dead will answer you, this one time.
*
A BOY’S piping voice.
“Great-Grandmother is dying.” He was close. Inside the crevice with Unar. No, outside of it, standing on something to make him taller. “She said to tell you. She said to thank you.”
“She will not answer, boy.” That voice was Bernreb’s. “She is sleeping. Here. I will set you down.”
Not a ladder. Bernreb. Holding the boy up to Unar’s hollow.
Who was his Great-Grandmother?
Maybe it’s me. Maybe Audblayin will never be a man, and I’ll sleep for eternity.
*
YOU SLOW grey mould! Frog cried. You one-fingered worm!
*
“WAKE UP, Godfinder,” Audblayin whispered in her ear.
Unar opened her eyes.
The lanky young woman who pressed her hands into Unar’s hands had a Canopian’s dark skin, an Understorian’s long, straight hair, and a Warmed One’s soulful, sepia eyes. She wore a yellow silk robe. It was cut off at the elbows. Unar saw the crease and sensed the magic of the spines. She smelled quince blossom and wood fern.
“I’m awake,” Unar tried to say, but her mouth felt adhered shut. Another young woman of about the same age—Unar’s age—with a rounder face, short hair, snub nose, and mischievous grin, stepped forward with a leather cup. She helped Unar to sit up and moisten her mouth with water.
“I am Imerissiremi,” she said. “You can call me Issi.” She had spines, too, and armour of overlapping metal scales that slithered as she moved. Weapons hung about her, as they had hung around Edax. “Ylly says it is time to go to Canopy.”
Edax.
Imerissiremi’s eyes glittered with excitement.
Unar heard weeping and lifted her head, blinking in the firelight. She’d been pulled out of her recess and into Bernreb’s bunk, the lowest one; at least, it smelled like him. She imagined she didn’t smell particularly pleasant herself. Her nostrils flared, perhaps expecting to find the smell of Edax’s broiled flesh, or Frog’s violated innards.
She’d thought time would heal her, but it seemed to her as if no time had passed.
“Is that what Ylly says?” she wondered. She looked into Audblayin’s eyes again. “Have you had a good childhood, Holy One?”
Audblayin’s smile was very kind.
“I have. I had more time, I think, because I’m down here. It’s been very different from my usual style of childhood. Enlightening, you might say.”
“You told them you were a goddess?”
“Only a few hours ago. I’ve been myself, properly, for a week, I think. The memories came slowly. I had to wait, to be sure. To remember everything that happened with you and Kirrik.”
“How could you remember that? You were a babe in the House of Epatut.”
“I remember everything that is done with my power. Every spell. Every new life. Every person the gift passes through. What you, Frog, and Kirrik used was my power, Unar.”
Unar’s hands, which had lain quiescent under the girl’s slender fingers, now seized Audblayin’s wrists, grinding them, before she could remember not to lay hands on a goddess.
“Do you mean to say that you could have stopped it?”
“Not at all. I was as helpless as you were at your worst, when you felled the great Temple of Airak. Let go of me.”
Unar let go. “Forgive me, Holy One. Please. I have a question for you, if you care to answer it. Long ago, when you took power from the Old Gods, why did you and the others fashion a barrier that would allow Canopians through, but not Understorians or Floorians?”
Audblayin’s large, dark eyes grew solemn.
“There are things I cannot share with you,” she said, “but trust this to be true. The barrier must stay the way that it was made until the Old Gods are forgotten.”
“That can’t be the answer, that you are afraid of the resurrection of the Old Gods,” Unar said, despairing. “Couldn’t you just make people forget?”
“No. To change people’s minds, to force them to forget, is to cut off their arms and legs. It is to cripple them. The barrier was my idea. I am the Waker of Senses, not the diminisher of thought. The death god, Atwith, suggested that those of Understorey and Floor who remembered the old ways should simply be killed. I opposed him.”
“But, Holy One. Now you’ve seen what it’s like to live down here. In the dark. Do Understorian children deserve to fall to their death because Odel isn’t here to protect them? Must Marram risk his life in the monsoon because there are no safe roads between villages, no defences against demons? Couldn’t he be allowed through the barrier, even to trade? Wouldn’t he be grateful to the new gods then, and more inclined to uphold your rule?”
“The barrier isn’t intended to be cruel to Understorians, Unar. It’s to protect Canopians, whose tribute gives us the strength to defend them. Unfortunately, the two peoples must remain apart. If the barrier were open for folk to freely trade, ideas would be exchanged as freely. Ideas that must be left in the dark to die out. Canopy could be contaminated. The risk is unacceptable.”
“But owning humans is acceptable?” Unar burst out angrily.
Audblayin smiled and shook her head.
“That’s something that may be changed. In my own niche, at least.”
Unar looked around, at last absorbing the tear-tracked faces of Ylly, Sawas, and Oos. Ylly’s hair was white, and her cheeks age-spotted. Sawas was even rounder, with crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. Oos had lines on her neck and pouches under her eyes which hadn’t been there before, but her weak, endearing, watery smile was the same.
“You’ve said your good-byes, here,” Unar surmised. “That’s why everyone’s crying. You’re ready to see the sun in a place where your own mother can never walk free.”
“So much bitterness, Unar.”
“I saved you,” Unar said, pleading. “I saved you. Can’t you force the Garden to let me in?”
“No.”
Unar put her face in her hands.
“Maybe it would be better if you went without me.”
“I don’t think so. Aoun is waiting for you.”
“For me?” Unar barked a laugh. “Aoun loves the Garden.”
“He loves the Garden,” Audblayin agreed. “But he hasn’t changed the key.”
I will not cry. Unar disguised her sorrow with rage. “So he hasn’t changed the key. So what? It will never turn for me!”