They breathed in, and out. Cleared their mindeye, and—
The kirin lurched out of the shadows at the same second they felt its presence in the Slack.
Akeha jumped backward, tripped foot over foot, landed on the flat of their palm. Pain shot up their arm. The kirin reared, wings swallowing the sky, head brushing the top of the trees, screech shaking the bones of the earth. A creature that was half bird, half lion, and all terror.
Akeha panicked. They’d never fought anything this big before. The creature before them was a blinding light in the Slack, sinew and flesh and bone. And blood. Warm blood surged through its veins. Overwhelmed by terror, they could only think, I have to stop it.
They tensed through water-nature, slowed the flow of blood by force, and stopped the kirin’s heart.
The kirin shrieked in pain. Startled, Akeha let go. They’d never heard anything scream like that before. Their stomach twisted, heavy and sour.
And then the kirin staggered as if struck, as power surged through the Slack from somewhere else. The creature fell to its knees, missing Akeha by a handsbreadth. Its breath was hot on their face.
With a noise that was both a groan and a cry, the kirin staggered to its feet and retreated into the trees. Badly hurt or just badly shaken, the creature had had enough. Akeha watched it vanish into the shadows, the rustle of its passage fading.
Mokoya stood on the path behind them, trembling, wide-eyed, and angry. Akeha got slowly to their feet. Their arm sang with pain where it had broken their fall. “How did you find me?”
“I told you. I saw you in the dream.”
“It was just a dream.”
“It wasn’t just a dream. I saw it exactly like it happened. When I woke up, you were gone, and I knew where you went.”
And Mokoya had predicted the kirin, too. The creature was supposed to be extinct. But they had known it would appear. How?
Akeha frowned. “Are you saying you dream about the future? Only prophets do that.” There hadn’t been a prophet recorded in the Protectorate for hundreds of years.
Mokoya bit their lip, and Akeha recognized that expression. Their sibling was one surge of anger away from tears. They grabbed their twin’s hand, balled into a hard fist that would not relax. “Moko.”
“You could have died. What were you doing?”
Akeha glanced toward the hidden peak of Golden Phoenix Mountain. “I was looking for the hidden caves.”
“Why?”
They shrugged. “We need somewhere to run if Mother comes to take us. I don’t want to go back.”
Mokoya pulled their hand away. “She won’t come. She doesn’t care about us.”
They turned so that Akeha couldn’t see their face. But Akeha knew with absolute clarity that they were more frightened than angry. The twins had a sense of each other, of emotions and anxieties, and they could hear each other’s voices through the Slack if they listened hard enough.
“Don’t be frightened,” Akeha said. “I’ll protect you.”
“Protect me from what? The future?”
“Anything.”
Mokoya turned back, cheeks painted with damp streaks. “What if it’s true? What if I’m dreaming about things that haven’t happened yet?”
“I said anything,” Akeha repeated, and pulled their twin into a fierce hug that blanketed up all protests. “We don’t have to tell anyone. It can be our secret.”
Mokoya settled into the hug, but their mood remained rough and shaky, and Akeha knew they weren’t convinced or comforted by that, either. “Let’s go back,” Akeha said. “Before anyone notices we’re gone.” The ache in their arm had almost subsided, and the fear and nervousness had faded into whispers. They could pretend that nothing had happened.
*
It was the sobbing that woke Akeha. All night they had floated on the edge between sleep and consciousness, plagued by visions of nightmarish shapes. Now their twin was hunched over at the edge of their shared sleeping mat, skinny frame shaking in the dark.
Akeha crawled over and tapped them on the shoulder. When Mokoya didn’t respond, they shifted so that the both of them were face-to-face. Mokoya’s was a crumpled, runny mess of fear and desperation. Another bad dream: the Slack seethed with the stress that trailed in the wake of their twin’s nightmares. It had been weeks since the last one, but the intensity of the dreams seemed to be getting worse.
Mokoya stopped to gulp down two lungfuls of freezing night air, then continued crying. Akeha reached out and took their hands and said nothing. This was becoming a familiar routine.
Eventually Mokoya’s sobbing petered into small sniffles. They wiped their snot with a thick sleeve as Akeha asked, “What’s happening?”
They shook their head, lips still sealed. Akeha pressed on: “What did you see?”
“Bad things.”
“I know it was bad things. What kind?”
Mokoya could not meet their eyes. “I saw a naga.”
“Where? Here?”
Mokoya shook their head. “At the spring procession.”
The spring procession was in two weeks, in the center of Chengbee. As Akeha considered this bit of information, Mokoya said, “You were there.”
“Why would I be at the spring procession?”
“I don’t know, you were in the forest too, how am I supposed to know what’s going to happen, I don’t control any—”
“Okay, okay. There’s a naga at the spring procession. I’m also there.”
“We were both there.”
“Of course. What happened?”
“It fell. The naga. It was flying, it took over the sky. Something happened. It fell onto the houses.”
As Akeha frowned, Mokoya added, “People got hurt.”
“Why did it fall? Was it attacking the city?”
“I don’t know,” Mokoya hissed, and their expression, which had been approaching normality, slid back toward furious tears. “I just saw it.”
“Did you get hurt?”
Mokoya buried their face in their hands, fingernails digging into the skin. “I don’t know. It just happened.”
Akeha gently pulled their hands away from their face. Mokoya put up a token resistance, and their hands slowly uncurled in Akeha’s. “Listen,” they said. “That was just a silly dream. Naga don’t come this far north. They live in the unknown south, in the Quarterlands, right? Even when they get lost, they don’t go farther than Katau Kebang. They can’t reach Chengbee. It’s impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible.”
“Well, somebody will see it, right? And then they’ll catch it. So it won’t happen.”
“It was really big, Keha. Naga are really big.”
“I know.”
“You said the same thing about the kirin.”
“That was different.”
“You said kirin don’t exist anymore. And there was one. Just as I saw in my dream.”
Akeha sighed and let go of Mokoya’s hands. They were right. There was no easy explanation that could wave away what Mokoya had seen.