Silver blood beaded upon Pathka’s leg. Tess fought down horror, dumped her pack out on the ground, and began ripping the leftover linen from her chemise into strips.
“The others turned back at the river, but I saw through your little ploy,” said Kikiu.
“Aren’t you clever,” said Pathka.
“Merely determined to hold you to your obligations,” snapped Kikiu, flaring her head spines.
Pathka ignored this last bit of aggression, but Tess glared daggers and wished she had head spines. She’d have shown Kikiu some flare. Pathka needed care, though, so Tess turned her attention to where it would do good.
Pathka let Tess wrap his leg without snapping or biting, all the fight drained out of him.
Kikiu cleaned blood off her claws with her flaming tongue and nudged the scattered fire sticks back into the pit. “You left before I could fight you,” she said at last. “You did it on purpose, knowing I couldn’t get my fatluketh unless I followed you.”
Fatluketh was the rite of adulthood, Tess recalled: hatchlings fought their mothers and then they were free of each other. Pathka’s damaged head spine came from such a fight.
“Would you believe I wasn’t thinking of you?” said Pathka, wincing as Tess tied off the bandage. “It is possible, perhaps, that you are not the center of the universe.”
“You never intended to fight me,” cried Kikiu. “You’ve abandoned the nest. What kind of quigutl are you?”
“That was no nest,” said Pathka. “I’d advise you to abandon it as well, and its false ideals, though I know you won’t. You’re afraid of your true nature.”
“True nature!” Kikiu scoffed.
“You may mock,” said Pathka, “but I’m doing what I’ve been called to do, going in search of the Most Alone.”
Kikiu flinched upon hearing the epithet, as if her mother habitually used the name as a weapon, but she recovered her sneer soon enough, and turned her attention to Tess.
“How did Pathka persuade you to go looking for imaginary monsters?” said Kikiu waspishly, black-hole eyes watching Tess shake out the blanket. “Do you know why we chained ko to that workbench? Because we found ko at the bottom of the deepest well in Trowebridge, passed out from a self-inflicted wound, poisoning the townspeople’s water with blood.”
Tess stared at Pathka in alarm; Pathka wouldn’t meet her eye.
“Ko might have died,” said Kikiu, “and the rest of us been driven out of town, and for what? A bizarre superstition based on ancient stories.”
“I chose a poor location. It was as far underground as I could get,” said Pathka, looking shifty. He tried to reassure Tess: “I was called; I heard it in my dream. There’s a very old story that says when the World Serpents call us back to them, we must answer—”
“And when we find them, the world will end,” said Kikiu. “You gloss over that part.”
“It won’t necessarily end,” said Pathka, his voice pleading now. “The stories say the singular-utl will end. That word is teeming with possible interpretations.”
“What is more singular and plural than the world itself?” said Kikiu.
“The World Serpents,” said Pathka quietly. “Or the one who searches for them.”
“Are you listening, human?” said Kikiu, wheeling toward Tess. “My mother seeks to kill us all, or die, or maybe both. You’ve unleashed ko upon the world—more fool you—but even if the world is safe, can you bear to walk a friend toward death? I couldn’t do it.”
Tess couldn’t begin to respond. Kikiu had pulled the floor out from under everything Tess thought she knew about Pathka’s journey, and left her standing on empty air.
“All I know is that I’ve been called,” said Pathka, his voice almost inaudible, like grit in the wind. “How do I live with myself if I don’t answer?”
“You live/die,” said Kikiu bitterly, using contradictory case. “Like the rest of us.”
“You do feel it,” said Pathka, rolling onto his side. His limp, exhausted body seemed melted into the dirt. “The malaise. The dis-ease. The creeping certainty that we’ve gone wrong.”
“I feel worse things than that,” said Kikiu, glowering. “You don’t know the half. But I bear them. I submit to the rules, and don’t go crying after myths and phantoms.” She leaped to her feet and shook herself off. “My fatluketh is done, and I am done with you. You have no further maternal claim upon me.”
“Good,” said Pathka. “Go.”
Kikiu spit into the dust, turned tail, and fled.
Tess clasped her hands around her knees, unsure what to say to Pathka. She’d been wrestling her own urge to die, making herself walk on, but what a cruel farce if she was simultaneously walking Pathka toward death.
Pathka broke the silence. “It’s not as dire as Kikiu made it sound. The end of the singular-utl is likely a metaphorical dissolution, or a merging together. Maybe it’s the entanglement of dreams I mentioned.”
“Likely. Maybe,” said Tess, poking Pathka with his own hedging words.
“It’s been a millennium since we left them Most Alone,” said Pathka, grinding his body into the dirt, making a depression to sleep in. “I can’t pretend to know what will happen. But I’ve been called: I’ve got to go. You know what that’s like. You answered the call of your boots.”
“That was a joke!” said Tess, unexpectedly offended.
She spread her blanket on the ground, trying to smooth her irritation at the same time, but it didn’t help. Maybe food would help. She rummaged in her pack for more, and was alarmed to find nothing. She dumped her belongings out on the ground; only a single cheese remained, and no money to speak of.
She lay down to sleep, but the gadfly with her mother’s voice was biting her again: You’re going to starve. You’re a terrible friend. The story hadn’t silenced it; worry over Pathka and food was making it worse. Tess felt herself curling tighter and tighter, like a spring made of bitterness, until she had no choice but to snap.
“Should I have let that egg kill you? Is that what you really wanted?” said Tess, feeling cruel as she said it. “Why else would you name your daughter Kikiu, ‘death’? Don’t imagine that morbid detail was lost on me. What a name to carry around. No wonder she resents you, when you force her to remember the time she accidentally almost killed you.”
Pathka opened his eyes; he’d been asleep. “Kikiu doesn’t resent me,” he said at last, ignoring the rest of Tess’s barbs. “It’s more like…ko has grown too big and feels trapped in ko own skin. It pinches. Kikiu needs to shed that polluted nest, but of course ko won’t. Ko has assimilated to their unnatural ways, and anyway, it’s easier to blame me. What’s a mother for but to be blamed?”
With that, he rolled onto his side away from the fire, signaling sleep more aggressively, and Tess was left to fend off her unwieldy feelings alone. She lay a long time, staring through branches at the night sky, until her temper was soothed by the cold impartiality of the stars.
* * *
First thing in the morning, as she was burying the ashes of the fire, Tess kicked up two stray bits of metal. One turned out to be a tiny key; Kikiu had apparently spit it into the dirt on parting. It unfastened the heavy manacle around Pathka’s ankle.
“That was kind of her,” said Tess.
“Symbolic, actually,” said Pathka, tossing the key and manacle into the ashes. “Now I’m completely free. Not that I’m complaining.”
Tess had palmed the other bit of metal, a pewter ring, which must have come from her pack. That meddling Seraphina had evidently sneaked it in there when she wasn’t looking.
“Pathka, be honest,” said Tess, worrying the thnik behind her back. “You said I was saving your life by journeying with you. Kikiu says I’m leading you toward death. Which is it?”
Pathka’s throat pouch quivered as he breathed. “I said you were naming my life, which is similar but not identical to saving. We name something to make it real, to give it meaning. You can name my life and I might still die. Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”