So why could Dozerius be forgiven, when Tess could not?
This question put her in a spiraling, simmering rage. She threw the jar of beets against a tree, and it shattered, red pulp everywhere, like brains or like her heart. It was a terrible waste, but she didn’t like beets anyway and she wanted to be wasteful.
Or she wanted to lay waste to…something. Anything. Everything.
Pathka found her soon after and assured her that he hadn’t been bleeding underground. She didn’t listen beyond that. She brushed off his nosy questions and walked in a haze, barely seeing the road, and then finally it was nighttime and she slouched by the fire, still steaming.
Pathka went to sleep, but Tess couldn’t. The foundational stories of her life had betrayed her; the inside of her head jangled with dissonance. Whose fault was this? Whom could she break her ire upon?
It was probably her own fault for being gullible. That just made her madder.
It occurred to her, all of a sudden, that she still had the pewter ring. Once she’d gotten enough to eat, it had stopped beckoning her home, so she’d half forgotten about it. She scrabbled through her pack, found it, rolled it between her fingers, desiring but not daring. It was the middle of the night, the rudest time to wake her sister. Seraphina wouldn’t get mad, that was not her way, but she was bound to say something to make Tess mad, and then Tess would have someone to yell at.
That would make her feel better.
Tess flipped the switch. The thnik hummed in her hand. Once, twice. Half a dozen times.
Finally, a voice crackled through. “Sisi?”
That wasn’t Seraphina. Tess’s throat seized up.
“Tess, is it you?” said Jeanne, her voice small and plaintive. “Seraphina said you had the mate to this ring, but I call and call and you never answer. Please, where are you? We’ve been so worried. I cry every night, imagining what might happen to you out there. Mama says to consider you dead, but—”
Tess flung the ring away, as if it burned her. The sandy soil stopped it from bouncing. Tess ground her heel upon it, stomped and crunched, her breath heavy and ragged. Jeanne’s voice crackled and went out.
A wash of cold regret hit her hard. Why was she so accursedly impulsive? She should have spoken to her sister. Jeanne was hurting, and it was her fault and she could have reassured her, but this flash of rage had…Why had she…
Mama says to consider you dead. That was why. She could help everyone out by making that a fact.
Suddenly Pathka leaped into the fray, crying, “Destroy it!” He torched the smashed thnik until it was a glistening puddle of molten metal. Dry leaves around it caught fire. Pathka did a hideous dance on his hind legs, capering among the flames like an ancient painting of a salamander spirit, vicious in his glee.
“Down with shoddy, soulless thniks!” he cried to the night. “Down with the foul profits that lure us away from our truth and our calling! Let us build only what our nature bids us build, and let us be true to our nature before all else!”
Tess sat down hard, appalled at herself and bewildered by Pathka’s reaction. He blew cool air over the melted mass, solidifying it, and placed it in his throat pouch. He noticed her staring, and said reassuringly: “You were right to break that thnik. They mass-produce those to sell at the market, as if we might buy human esteem if only we had enough coin. I will make you a better device—two better devices. Once we discover deeper caverns, we’ll want to search in our own directions and find each other again.”
He held Tess’s gaze. “That wasn’t what you were angry about, though, was it?”
“Not exactly,” said Tess, morose and regretful now. Dear, sad Jeanne! Reassurance had been in Tess’s power to give, even a kind word or two, but she’d acted before her mind could…
It was like kicking the beggar under the bridge. Something terrible in her kept bursting out, beyond her control. It never went away, even if it quieted while she walked. Walking only suppressed her inherent awfulness. It wasn’t a cure. Maybe there was no cure. She’d been born bad, and she was dragging her bad carcass through the wilderness to no avail.
She flopped onto her blanket, hurting all over, feeling like she’d slid all the way back to the beginning. It was going to be hard to make herself walk on tomorrow.
Pathka was at her side, padded fingers soft against her cheeks. “Is it that boy?” he said incongruously.
“What boy?” said Tess. She swatted his hands away, even though their touch was a comfort. She didn’t deserve comforting.
“The one you loved, who abandoned you,” said Pathka. “You’ve been furious all day, long before Jeanne called you. Is he the wellspring of your anger?”
Tess was sure she hadn’t said Will had abandoned her. That wasn’t even the word she used when she thought about Will; she always said disappeared.
“You’re making assumptions.”
“Deductions,” Pathka corrected her. “And of course I am. It’s my duty, as your friend.”
Tess squirmed; there was a rock under her blanket. “Do you remember the story of Julissima Rossa? How she killed herself, repenting her infidelity, whereas Dozerius—who’d killed her husband—went traipsing off after treasure as if nothing had happened?”
“What are you getting at?” asked Pathka.
“Why do we forgive Dozerius?” Tess’s voice was like the embers of the fire.
“I don’t understand the question,” said Pathka. “Who forgives Dozerius?”
“Everyone,” said Tess. “Nobody says, ‘Saints in Heaven, this man is terrible,’ and stops reading at that point. If we can forgive him for killing an old man, why can’t we…why…” She couldn’t finish, not if she wanted to keep her composure.
Pathka tilted his head sideways, confused. “I can’t forgive Dozerius. I’d have to bite him, but he hasn’t wronged me, so…the idea makes no sense.”
Tess noticed for the first time that Pathka said forgive in heavily accented Goreddi, as if there were no comparable word in Quootla. “Is this not a concept among quigutl?”
“We bite each other,” said Pathka. “It amounts to the same thing. It gets the poison out of your system so that it doesn’t eat at you anymore.”
“What if you can’t bite the one who wronged you?” asked Tess, mystified. “What if…you don’t know where they are?”
“Or they’re dead, or human?” said Pathka. “Then you’re biting-utl. That can lead to death—your own, if you’re lucky, or someone else’s. If you can’t bite whom you need to bite, you end up biting whoever comes near.”
Tess had done that, she suddenly realized. She’d been the bitingest biter at the wedding, because the person she really wanted to bite was…No. She wasn’t going to think about him.
She’d been terrible. She felt worse than she had in weeks, like everything was caving in on her again. Right on cue, her mother’s voice cut in, cut deeper than ever: You ruin your sister’s wedding night, and then you can’t speak two words to her? How do you sleep at night?
She wouldn’t tonight, certainly.
“What do you do, Pathka,” Tess half whispered, “if the person you most desperately need to bite is yourself?”
“Then you bite yourself,” said Pathka. “With your mind.”
“Beat myself up, you mean?” said Tess bitterly. “Recite my long litany of regrets? I do that all the time.”
It made her wish she were dead. She wrapped her arms around her head.
“No, not that,” said Pathka. His breath burned against her neck. “I mean grasp on to yourself. Clamp down. Hold on with everything you’ve got.”
The fire snapped; crickets chirped.
“And then let go,” said the fierce, hot wind in her ear.
Tess said nothing. Pathka crept back to the other side of the fire. She waited until she heard him snoring, and then she let the tears flow.