“Fine.” I wanted to ask about the strange lightness, but I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, which was sad and tender, like a father and a husband all at once, and I didn’t want to make the lightness real by talking about it. So I just said “Fine” again and busied myself with washing up and putting out the fire and getting the camp ready for us to set off, while Joki sat there and sipped his wine and tea in silent sadness. Then I was mad at myself for doing all the work when he didn’t deserve it, but by the time that thought had come to me, I was already done and we were ready to go.
Joki tried to get me to ride in the cart with him, but I said no, I could walk better than Tähti could pull me, and so we started up the road again, heading into the morning shadows as the sun slowly climbed its way up the other side of the mountains, waiting until midday to burst free and greet us.
When we stopped to rest, we were overtaken by two men in a cart even shabbier than ours, pulled by a horse even skinnier and sadder-looking than poor Tähti. The men themselves were no better, with scraggly gray beards that appeared to be the result of laziness rather than planning, and clothes that must not have been washed for a month.
“That’s a pretty one you’ve got there, Joki,” one of them called to us. “What’d you do: tell her she had the gift to get her to come with you?”
“That’s your trick, Heikki,” said Joki. He turned away from the men, showing no interest in talking to them as they plodded past, even though he clearly knew them.
“So she does have the gift, then?” called Heikki, who seemed unable to take the hint.
“More than you, that’s for sure,” Joki shouted back. “But then, so does my horse.”
Heikki’s lips thinned. I wanted to tell Joki not to rile him, not to make them mad or draw any attention to me, but he shouted several things of that ilk after Heikki’s back as it retreated down the road away from us.
“They’re dangerous,” I said once they were out of sight. “We shouldn’t make them mad.”
“Dangerous they are,” Joki agreed. “But only for the weak.”
“How do you know them?”
Joki said nothing as we gathered up our things, and I thought he wasn’t going to answer me, but he said abruptly, once we had started walking, “We started the training together. But only I finished.”
“Oh,” I said. “So...what happens to those who fail? I thought...I thought they...died.”
“Sometimes they do. And sometimes they just fail, and have to make their way in the world with that burden on their shoulders. Some would say that’s worse than death.”
“That’s just silly.”
The look that Joki gave me had all of the father in it, and little of the wistful would-be lover. “You only think that because you’ve never failed at anything, Laela,” he said. “Nothing worth dying for.”
“The training isn’t worth dying for! None of this is!”
“And yet you were willing to come with me, even though you thought the price of failure was death.”
“That was just...”
“Yes?”
“Curiosity,” I said awkwardly. “I don’t really mean to die for it. I’d never do something like that.”
“If you say so,” said Joki, and urged Tähti onwards.
It was another clear, chill fall afternoon, with the wind blowing off the snowy caps of the mountains and down our spines, just cold enough to be pleasantly unpleasant. I strode along ahead of Joki and Tähti, still feeling strangely light but not bad. When we stopped for the night, I wasn’t tired at all.
“Come,” said Joki, when we had set up for the evening. “It’s time for your next dose.”
I came over to him with less reluctance than the night before, although with funny pangs in my stomach, that I had heard described before, normally by young women in love, but never truly felt.
“Can I take more?” I asked, when he took out the vial of red liquid. “Will it work faster if I take more? Will I become stronger?”
“So eager already?”
“I think you’re right. It is making me stronger. And I want to be stronger for...for when we arrive.”
The look he gave me was almost as sad as the one he had given me when he had told me what I really was. “No,” he said. “Or rather, yes. You could take more. But you would not enjoy what it would do to you. Better, safer, to go slowly. And besides, I don’t have much.”
“Will I be given more when...when I arrive?”
“If you pass the tests, yes.”
“How much more?”
He shrugged. “A bit. Not much. There isn’t”—the words were coming out more and more slowly—“there isn’t much left.”
“What do you mean, ‘not much left’?”
“Exactly what I just said. Not much left. So we can’t afford to waste any, or use too much. Now come here and take your dose.”
I obediently took the last steps up to him, and let him tilt the vial back into my mouth, releasing a single precious, delicious drop onto my tongue.
When the first effects had passed and I returned to myself, holding onto a tree in order to keep from collapsing onto the ground, I found Joki’s eyes on me. His pupils were as large as if he had been given belladonna, and the expression on his face was strange.
“It is true,” he said, not taking his eyes off mine. “What they told me. There is nothing like it. Giving a beautiful woman the blood.”
I didn’t like those words at all, and wanted to say something to counter them, but my tongue would not obey me, and neither would the rest of me, so I only laughed feverishly as he made supper for the both of us and then sent me to my bed under the cart.
4
This morning was the same
