Sash bows to the two Aerodyne. “Thank you, Angelicusepte. Thank you, Chasmatu. I appreciate your kindness.”
As they return her bow, I reach behind me and push Maya out to my side. She and I bow to the two Aerodyne. After we all return to upright, Sash motions for Maya and me to follow her. The three of us walk to the north.
“Hunter!” Chasmatu calls out. We all stop and turn to him. “I doubt your spear has ever landed anywhere other than exactly where you intended it to.”
“Then I’ll make sure to never aim it at you,” she replies.
The way Sash interacts with the Guardians is fascinating. She’s not afraid to stand up to them by fighting intimidation with intimidation, but she’s also respectful and gracious. More than anything else, she knows precisely how to speak to them to get what she wants.
Chasmatu walks away without saying anything else to Sash, but as he heads to the south, he glances over his winged shoulder at her. He studies her for a moment with what appears to be approval in his eyes. It’s as though he respects her for taking a verbal jab at him, and maybe even for her initial deception to summon him from the sky.
After looking away from Sash, Chasmatu charges towards the cliffs. Angelicusepte sprints behind him across the rocky terrain. Their wings spread from their backs, lifting their bronzed bodies into the air. Side by side, a mirror image of one other, they arc across the sky towards the river. When they reach the edge of the Great Falls, they dive straight down and disappear into the thick mist.
“They are spectacular creatures,” I comment.
“Yes, they are,” Sash says. “I should warn you, though. Stay away from the black feathers on the ends of their wings.”
“Why?” I ask.
“They’re as hard as steel and as sharp as a knife. They can slice a person in half.”
“That’s good to know,” I say. “But other than that, they seem pretty harmless.”
“What?” Maya asks, not understanding my sarcasm. “Chasmatu is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. Even scarier than the Schorachnia.”
“He can be a bit frightening,” Sash says to Maya, “but as I said earlier, even if this is hard on you, you’re getting to experience Krymzyn in a way that only the Travelers can.”
Maya nods her head. “I know. I feel fortunate about that. It just upsets me that it’s because Tela is lost.”
“The person Angelicusepte saw must have been Tela,” I say to Sash.
“I think so, too,” she says. “Tela could have taken the transport over the Stone Crossing and then gone to the southeast. She knows as well as anyone that very few Murkovin dwell close to the Aerodyne’s domain.”
“I think we should move our search east of the river,” I suggest.
“I agree,” Sash replies. “The next time we take Maya out, we’ll begin on the other side of the Great Falls and work our way to the east. We don’t have time this morrow to go all the way up to the Stone Crossing and back down the other side of the river.”
“No,” I say. “And there’s something important we need to do with Aven when we get back to the Delta.”
“What is it?” Sash asks.
“I’ll tell you after we pick her up from Home.”
Chapter 32
“Happy birthday dear Aven,” I sing. “Happy birthday to you.”
Aven beams a smile at me and claps her little hands together. “Tank-u, Daddy!”
Sitting with Aven on the floor of her room, Sash and I take turns hugging our daughter. Before launching into the song, I’d spent a few minutes explaining to Aven and Sash how we celebrate birthdays on Earth.
At a year old, Aven’s hair has grown long enough that it hangs to her shoulders in waves of thick, shiny ebony. Her body is lean and toned, and her movements deliberate and graceful. Any time I watch Aven in an activity, I feel as though I have a glimpse of what Sash must have been like as a child.
Even though Aven’s pronunciation isn’t always perfect, her vocabulary would be impressive for a three-year-old on Earth. She can only put a few words together at a time, yet comprehends most of what Sash and I say to her. If she doesn’t understand something, more times than not, it’s because she pretends not to—especially when Sash and I tell her to stop doing something that she knows she shouldn’t be doing. Her strong will, for better or worse, is just like her mother’s.
“I have something for you,” I say to Aven. “I’ll be right back.”
I walk to the main cavern to retrieve the birthday present I made for Aven. During the months that we’ve been searching for Tela, I’ve used the evenings on morrows we didn’t go to the Barrens to secretly work on it. It was the only way I could free my mind of the ever-increasing mental distress from not finding Tela.
As I return to Aven’s room, I hide the handmade notebook behind my back. Wren made the front and back covers out of smooth steel plates and used metal pins to secure canvas sheets between them. On the front cover, I carefully painted three words in my finest script—Aven’s First Year.
“This is really for both of you,” I say, sitting down between Sash and Aven. “It’s called a baby book in my world. It’s a collection of things that serve as a reminder of important events in a child’s early life.”
After I lay the book down on the floor, Sash and Aven both gaze at it with thoughtful smiles on their faces. I open the front cover and reveal the first page. The sheet of canvas has a black and white sketch of a pregnant Sash standing in front of Ovin’s tree. Depicting the scene from the Darkness when I felt our daughter kick for the first time, one branch of the tree rests in the palm of Sash’s outstretched hand. Sash’s other hand is pressed to the curve
