Ever (15 page)

The buzzing and stinging stop. I squint down at myself between bloated eyelids. My throat is raw from screaming. The bees are growing, flattening, changing—

Into spiders! Hundreds of spiders! I swipe at them, but they cling. My whisking wind fails again. The spiders are
spinning thick webs across me. My voice is silenced as threads cross my mouth.

In my terror, I lose command of my swift wind. I'm spiraling I don't know where.

KEZI

N
IGHT FALLS.
I
SIT
on the stream bank, knees drawn up to my chest for warmth. Olus's stalwart wind surrounds me, although there seems to be no danger. After a while I curl on my side, listen to the water, and close my mind to the future.

Birdsong wakes me. The call of one bird is
twee-tee-twit
, sounding in my ears like
twenty-six twenty-six twenty-six
, over and over, numbering my remaining days.

Olus should have returned by now.

The sun has warmed me. I drink from the icy stream. My teeth ache, but the water is delicious. A breeze rustles through the canopy of leaves in the woods behind me. Olus's breeze. I wonder if he sent it to tell me he's on his way. His stalwart wind still curls around me. I know by the roses.

I'm hungry. A few yards downstream is a plum tree loaded with fruit. Pushing worry away—about Olus, about me—I dance to the tree. When I shake the trunk, breakfast rains down. I crouch and collect plums in the lap of my tunic.

The stream parts around a wide flat rock. Holding my tunic out, I step stones to reach it. On the rock I sit and eat, dropping pits in the water. When I'm finished, I take Olus's ball of wool out of my waist sack. I wind one end a few turns around my finger.

The birdsong ceases.

“Kezi . . .”

I jump up. Olus's wool falls into the stream and is carried away.

A man wrapped in orange linen stands under the plum tree. Is he a man or only man shaped? Is there flesh under the cloth?

Olus's stalwart wind should take me out of danger, but it does nothing.

“I . . . won't . . . hurt . . . you.”

If a desert could speak, it would have his voice.

Might this be Admat, the cloth covering his invisibility?

Toes and the top of a sandal peep out from under the lowest linen strip. Five ordinary-seeming toes and toenails give me enough confidence to stammer, “W-who are y-you?” I bow my head, then raise it to watch him.

“I've . . . come . . . to . . . help you find your destiny. Perhaps you can become a heroine.”

His accent is the same as Olus's. I hear
helb
and
berhabs
.

“I . . . am . . . Puru. . . .”

Buru
is probably Puru. I wonder if he's another Akkan god or a true masma, an evil one, making himself sound Akkan. I hop stones to the opposite bank. “Did the god of the winds send you?”

“The . . . god . . . of . . . fate does no one's bidding.” He vanishes and reappears at my side.

Aa! I back away. A branch cracks under my foot.

He advances.

“Olus will return soon,” I say. And blow you away.

A raspy chuckle. “Not . . . soon. . . .”

Olus! “Why not?”

“He . . . is . . . undergoing . . . his trial for you.”

“To become a champion?”

Another chuckle and no answer.

Olus will be safe. He's a god! But I'm frightened for both of us.

If this Puru is lying, Olus will come.

“Olus . . . doesn't . . . know . . . how you can reach Enshi Rock, but I do.”

“You can help me?”

Puru's head swivels from side to side. “No . . . one . . . can . . . help you, but I can tell you how to attempt it.”

“How?”

“You . . . must . . . go . . . beneath the volcano.”

“I want to go up, not down.”

“You . . . may . . . rise . . .” His linen finger points up. “. . . only by descending.” The finger points down.

I wish I could see his face.

“You . . . must . . . go . . . to Wadir, to the world of the warkis.”

“I'll be dead soon enough!”

“If . . . you . . . seek . . . immortality, you must visit Wadir.”

But Wadir is in the west, not under a volcano—or so I was taught.

“Come.” He walks into the woods.

I don't know what to do. Olus! Admat! Olus! I don't move.

He turns. “I . . . can . . . leave . . . you. It is of little importance to me. You must decide.” He waits.

A bunting perches on his head, raises its pale throat, and sings. The bird isn't afraid of him.

“I'm coming.” I can stop at any time, and I don't have to do what he tells me to.

He's on a narrow path. I follow several paces behind. He sets his feet with care, seemingly unaccustomed to walking. The linen, which is skirtlike down to his knees, shortens his steps.

We walk for hours. The rhythm of our slow march and the scent of roses put me into a trance. The moon rises. My twenty-sixth day has slipped away.

OLUS

I
CAREEN THROUGH THE
air trussed in spider thread. My slitted eyes peer from the gray web into the night sky. I call on my winds, but my commands are wrapped inside with me.

Threads circle my throat, pressing into my windpipe. I suck in air between my teeth.

My fingernails scratch the webbing on my hands. These spiders spin with ropes of iron! I continue to scratch. My fingers curl. My nails cut into my palms. Spiders spin my chin to my chest. Mount Enshi is below.

My stomach lurches. I am dropping, plummeting. I crash down. Hear a splash. Feel pain slam through my back. My upper and lower teeth clack against each other. My eyes descend into their sockets.

KEZI

P
URU STOPS.
I
BUMP
into him and leap back. In the moonlight I see his hand circle the thin trunk of a mulberry bush. He pulls. The bush, its roots, and the earth around them come up easily.

A tunnel is revealed. Rough rock stairs descend into the mountain. Beyond the top few steps the darkness is complete.

Puru yanks a branch off the mulberry and raises it toward the night sky. A star deepens to orange. The branch begins to burn, brightly at first. Then it dims but doesn't go out.

“Your . . . torch . . . will . . . give light until you reach Wadir. Olus's wind will depart as soon as you enter the tunnel. It cannot flow underground. If Olus follows you to Wadir, he will lose his powers and no longer be a god. He'll be mortal, like you.”

“He mustn't follow me!”

Puru thrusts the glowing branch into the ground.

“Are there gods who are still gods in the underworld? Is Admat there?”

“I . . . have . . . never . . . been to Wadir. When you arrive, you must pluck a feather from a warki.”

The warkis have wings? Under a mountain?

“The . . . feather . . . is . . . essential. Pluck it quickly. Do nothing else. Eat nothing. Drink nothing. The warkis will want to keep you. If you remain long enough to sprout feathers, you'll be there forever.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

His voice becomes even raspier. I can barely make out his words.

“Fate . . . may . . . be . . . thwarted.” He's silent. Then, “I . . . long . . . for . . . a happy outcome.”

I'm not sure I heard him correctly. “Please, Puru, did you say . . .”

He's vanished.

I sit down with my back to a tree, several feet from the tunnel mouth. I picture the warkis as skeletons with wings and try not to imagine becoming one of them.

Eventually I fall asleep. In my dream Mati bends over her loom. Pado counts the servants' wages. Nia sits outside our door. Aunt Fedo approaches her, while the asupu scatters dead mice up and down the street.