She had found it again somehow, against all odds, and now she clasped the witchwood egg close to her breast and tried to fight her way through the chaos. She had stood outside this roiling madness once, she thought, had been able to consider her situation with something like detachment, but if that had ever been true, it had been a long time ago. Now the sky itself had turned to hot gray slush, and muddy hands reached up again and again from the bubbling muck that surrounded her, catching at her limbs and hair, trying always to pull her downward. Even the branches of the sacred willows seemed to reach out to entangle her, to force her back into the endless, all-devouring lake of steaming mud. Every step was a nightmare struggle.
Why am I even fighting? Always now this treacherous voice spoke in her thoughts, urging surrender. The heat will only be for a little while, it told her. Then everything will turn cool again, cool as running water, cool as early spring grass, cool as stones deep in the ground. The fight will be over. You will rest.
But despite her breathless weariness and her muddled thoughts, Tanahaya knew that voice was not telling the whole truth. It was the sleep of death to which she was being invited, the cool of life finally departing her body. And so she fought on.
Faces came to her as she struggled, her family, her loved ones. But instead of urging resistance they joined the treacherous inner voice, begging her to give up.
You have fought well, said ancient Himano, her clan lord. There is no disgrace in surrender, child. No disgrace.
It was not disgrace she feared, but obliteration. Tanahaya was neck deep in bubbling hot mud, tangled in roots, but knew she dared not give up. Her people were so few now. They could not surrender, did not surrender, would never surrender, no matter how terrible the odds.
We love you, as-good-as-sister, Aditu and Jiriki told her. We will remember you when you are at rest. We will celebrate your sacrifice.
But Tanahaya did not want to be celebrated. She wanted nothing but to see the sun again and feel its dry warmth, to drink the scents on a breeze, to hear the music of wind through forest branches. She wanted to exist.
Give up the egg. It is not worth dying for, her childhood friend Yeja’aro told her.
No, it is worth living for, she told herself—told all the voices—even as her strength flagged and she slipped deeper into the boiling mud. It is worth living for.
Then without warning a wind swept across the world, just a whisper of a breeze at first, then stronger, gradually stronger, cooling the mud, cooling the drippingly hot air, cooling everything. At first Tanahaya thought it only another attack, but the mud that pulled at her began to turn solid and after only a few more moments she kicked her way free. The hot mire had lost its grip, and she pulled herself out of it and onto solid land for the first time in a long, long while. When she did not sink again, when the beautiful cool continued to grow, she knew she could finally stop fighting.
The fever. It was a last thought before she let go, before she could finally, truly rest after so long. The poison fever—it has finally broken.
? ? ?
“Tanahaya. Can you hear me?”
“It’s us, Aditu and Jiriki. Can you hear us?”
She opened her eyes, not without difficulty, because the lids were crusted and sore. “Where am I?” she asked.
“In H’ran Go-jao, Sister-bird,” said Aditu, the beloved face bent close above her. “It gives my heart joy to see you. We feared you lost, but the healers have done their work. And not just our healers—the mortals kept you alive until they could bring you here, praise to the Garden.”
“Yes,” said Jiriki, and there was something in his voice that Tanahaya had not heard before, something deep and profound. “Praise to the Garden.”
“Poison. My wounds were poisoned with something terrible. What was it?”
“The healers still do not know,” Aditu told her. “None of them have seen its like before. We are astonished you still live, dear friend.”
“But I failed my mission.” Tanahaya had recovered enough to feel shame. “I let myself be ambushed before I even reached Asu’a.”
“Did you see who did it?”
Tanahaya tried to shake her head but was still too weak. She felt fragile, no more substantial than dried flower petals. “They shot at me from hiding. It was more than one enemy and the arrows were black. That is all I know.”
“Black like those of the Hikeda’ya?”
“Perhaps. At the time I did not closely examine their workmanship, and when I awoke later they were gone.” She lay still for a moment, breathing slowly, trying to think. “How did I get here?”
“The mortals brought you. The young prince and Count Eolair, an old ally of ours.”
“I wish to thank them.”
Jiriki made Lapwing’s Cry with his long fingers, the sign for a sadness that could not be helped. “They have gone. S’hue Khendraja’aro sent them back.”
“But we need their help!”
Aditu sat up, her hands cradling her round belly. “Yes, and they sought help from us as well, but the time is wrong for it—perhaps wrong beyond mending. It seems the curse of our two races to be so often at cross purposes.”
“So what will we do?” Despite her fear, Tanahaya felt sleep pulling powerfully at her, but she did not want to give up the world again so soon.
“What we must,” Jiriki said. “Fight on. Give our lives if that is all we can do. Because if we lose this time, the ending is unthinkable. It will be worse than what Ineluki Storm King himself had planned.” He made a sign against the jealous dead. “It may bring Unbeing itself.”
“But you are not ready to rejoin that battle yet,” Aditu told her. “Sleep, dear Tanahaya. Sleep. As we say, tomorrow the Garden may be closer.”
But even as she let herself slide back toward exhausted sleep, Tanahaya knew that Aditu only meant to soothe her. The Garden was lost, as all their people knew. It would remain lost no matter what, or at least everything good it had contained was gone beyond reclaiming. That was the doom of her people.