She’d never been good at prayer, and Anathuthia was surely more monster than goddess, and yet. She could think of nothing else to try.
“Anathuthia,” she said to the empty air, “I am nest to Pathka, insofar as a human can be. Nest and not-nest. I call upon you, since Pathka cannot.”
There was no sound but the thunking and flapping of the mill.
Nothing was happening. She didn’t know what to do. Last time Pathka had said to listen to herself, but that was surely useless. She wasn’t a quigutl. She didn’t have the kind of connection that—
A terrible idea struck Tess. She blinked, as if the thought were dust in her eye and her vision might clear, but it was still there.
Pathka wasn’t conscious enough to dream, let alone vouch to Anathuthia that Tess was his nest. The only way she could think of to show the serpent she was serious involved ingesting poison.
Tess swirled the blood, took a deep breath, and put the scale-bowl to her lips.
She took a single drop into her mouth and was overwhelmed by astringent bitterness, like earwax and green persimmons. It numbed her tongue and seized her throat so she couldn’t swallow. Her whole being seemed to shrivel and pucker, except for her stomach, which lurched violently. Tears streamed down her cheeks; she couldn’t do this, she’d failed.
She retched into the wheat. A thin stream of drool hung from her lips.
It began to glow.
“Never,” she whispered, and the wind whispered back through the wheat, as if in answer.
She took another tiny dram—less terrible because her mouth was already numb—and she spit it out messily, all over Pathka. The droplets glowed like fireflies, and then the blood he’d spilled crawling through the wheat began to glow as well, like the long blue tail of a comet.
“Anathuthia, I call you,” Tess cried hoarsely, feeling it. “Most Alone, who is not alone. Singular-utl. Pathka needs you. Find him and soothe him and let him come home.”
The wind picked up; the wheat rolled in waves like the ocean. Tess was too logical to believe it was an acknowledgment, and yet…
Pathka’s limbs twitched as he finally began to dream; his wounds began to close.
Tess crawled a little ways and vomited in the wheat. Then she lay beside him and slept.
* * *
Her mouth still tasted terrible when she awoke, but she seemed to have suffered no other ill effects. She was going to have to take this up with Seraphina, if she ever saw her again.
On the other side of the ridge, muffled shouts told her the crew had begun to stir.
Tess looked down at Pathka, who was still sleeping like the dead. It was time for their roads to be reunited, there was no question about that, but first she had some loose ends to tie up. Her pack was back at camp, and she didn’t like leaving with no explanation. She owed Gen that, at least.
If she went quickly, Pathka would never know she’d been gone. She dashed back across the fields toward camp, steeling herself to say goodbye.
Tess retrieved her pack from an empty tent; Mico, Felix, and Aster must’ve been at breakfast already. She had absentmindedly carried the scale-bowls back with her, so she shoved those inside her bag, along with her savings, her dirty laundry, and the rest of her gear. She crossed camp to the mess tent and entered, scanning the crowded trestle tables for Boss Gen.
“Where’d you sneak off to, ’Puco?” called Felix.
Mico hollered after: “Sleeping with the boss again?” Laughter went up all around.
Tess thumbed her nose at them. A gust of wind shook the tarps of the dining tent, and then an eerie, inhuman scream and a very human shout of alarm sounded from the road.
Everyone leaped to their feet and rushed out to see what had happened.
One of the cart horses was screaming, eyes reeling white, bucking against the traces. Its drovers tried to calm it as it reared, overturning its wagon and scattering gravel everywhere.
The drovers cursed, scrambling to right the cart again.
The crew wouldn’t be able to move on until the road was cleared. They ran for shovels while Boss Gen barked orders.
This was not the time to approach her about quitting.
Someone pressed a shovel into Tess’s hands, and then she was rushing to the roadward side of the gravel pile, ready to do her job one last time. The wind grew wilder and whipped her short hair around.
She’d reached the far side of the gravel when a flood of animals surged across the road in front of her: field mice, frogs, rats, chipmunks, badgers, snakes, crickets, a flock of starlings, and finally a small battalion of deer surged out of the wheat. The animals swarmed east, reaping a swath through the fields on both sides of the road. The crew gaped in dumbfoundment. It was like a story or a dream, these animals united in direction and purpose.
The mill was east, Tess suddenly realized. Were they running toward Pathka, or away from something else?
That was when the earth began to shake.
The tremor snatched Tess’s feet from under her, and she belly-flopped hard on the paving stones. Men fell like timber behind her, crawled on elbows and knees, cried out in terror. Tess’s brains seemed to slosh in her head; she clung to the stones, feeling upside down, as if someone had grabbed the world like a big ball and was trying to shake the ants off it. She hung on with everything she had.
The shouts around her took on a new meaning. She heard her name—“Tes’puco!”—over and over. She raised her cheek from the stones and saw her comrades wildly waving from the gravel pile. Tess blinked uncomprehendingly. Felix shouted through cupped hands, and she could discern his shrill words through the cacophony: “Stupid-head! Get your stupid body over—”
She didn’t hear the rest. A thunderous rumble, like the earth’s intestinal tract, jerked her up and down and side to side, and then the solid ground disappeared from under her, stone and earth turned into empty space. A deafening roar, darkness and dust; she couldn’t orient herself in space. She flopped like a rag doll, bouncing around, like falling down stairs, sliding, scraping.
She hit her head and saw stars. When she finally realized she’d stopped moving, and the dust began to clear, she saw the hole, maybe fifteen feet above her. She was on top of a shifting pile of loose stone, not underneath it. That was lucky.
Her hearing slowly cleared. She heard Nicolas enjoining others to avoid the edge: “—it’s not that you might fall in and break your necks—as if I cared!—but you might send more rocks precipitating down to crush Tes’puco.”
Tess felt like one big bruise. Her eyes were crusty with dust. Her limbs seemed intact and uncrushed, but something had happened to her left side. Maybe a cracked rib. It gripped her lung like a vise and sent a shock of agony up her side when she tried to breathe.
“?’Puco!” It was Felix screaming. “Answer me, damn you! If you’re alive, answer!”
She couldn’t get enough breath to scream. “I’m here,” she wheezed. “Not dead.” It struck her as funny, even though it manifestly wasn’t. Still not dead, in spite of everything.
They couldn’t hear her; they kept shouting. A light rain of gravel drummed on her head; she dragged herself out of range, down the side of the mound, deeper into darkness. They’d never see her unless they came to the edge and shone a light.
Gen’s brassy voice sounded over everyone else’s. “No closer, you idiots. Have we already forgotten Daniele’s bad example? Will you follow each other over the edge, one by one, like lemmings? We will find her, but we’ll do it systematically.”
There was absolute silence for a heartbeat, and then someone said, “Her?”
Tess wanted to laugh at Gen’s misstep under pressure, but the laugh turned into a cough, which was agony. Tears rushed down her cheeks, mixing with the dirt to form muddy streaks.
“Hush!” cried Arnando’s echoing basso. “I hear something.”