“Akumeh!” It was a cry from overhead: Laocha.
“Madoc, where’s Anahli?” This from Kuli, leaning perilously over the edge above. “Anahli!”
Their shrieks echoed, almost swallowed by the churning water.
Anahli.
Akumeh didn’t stop shoving at Tokela. Madoc tried to move, act. Pain flared through his leg and felled him on the spot. Tokela choked, convulsed, curled sideways. River water spewed, commingling with blood on the stones.
“Tokela!” Madoc grabbed for him, missed.
Either his voice or Akumeh curling bodily behind Tokela and giving one more jerk and heave was the deciding point. Tokela pitched upwards with a muffled shriek, spewing and choking, water pouring from his mouth and nose and down his chest. Akumeh held him through the worst of it, and Madoc couldn’t even resent him, much as he wanted to.
Wild-eyed, Tokela fought him, and when he could breathe enough to speak, his first sound was, “Ah… nahli?” It choked, barely audible over the fall.
“It’s done, Otter.” Akumeh held on. “It’s done.”
“Where… where is”—Tokela kept coughing, spewing water—“Anahli? Where is she?” It didn’t seem possible, but he was gaining free of Akumeh’s hold, squirming and sliding from the firm grasp like a greased Dancer. “We have to find her… River has her!”
To hear it spoken aloud shoved Madoc back against the ground like a cart-weight of stone, a shiver and stutter of sudden fear loosed and realised.
Tokela had clambered up, staggering, evading Akumeh’s every effort to hold him. “We have to find her. We have to!”
Akumeh didn’t stop trying, either. “It’s over, Otter. It’s over. Over.” Every repetition piled more weight onto Madoc. He was immobile from it, pressing into Earth and helpless.
“Otter… Hear me. Otter… Tokela!” Akumeh finally grabbed one arm, yanked Tokela back around. “It’s done, do you hear me?”
“Not over. It can’t be. We have to go after her, have to find her, have to…” Tokela was past listening, disoriented. Maddened, with blood and mud and ebon-copper hair runnelling into his face and eyes—and those eyes were white-wild, with shadows like clouds, and sparks like ice falling from wintering Sky.
Madoc tried to lurch upwards again; again, he fell back with a pained shout.
The two other ahlóssa kept keening on the clifftop, clutching to each other.
“Listen!” Akumeh grabbed Tokela’s other arm, yanked him close, shook him. “She’s gone.”
A soft negation whimpered from some deep place in Madoc’s chest, but neither of the oških paid any heed.
“You were nearly gone, and she’s—”
Tokela turned on Akumeh, shrieked, “We have to find her!” It cut even River’s sound into tiny shards, echoed upwards and into the trees and hung there, vibrating.
Then he wrung from Akumeh’s grip, ran the few steps to River and dove, cutting coppery water like a bone blade, disappearing in the froth.
“Tokela!” Madoc shouted after, and this time he managed to gain his feet—or foot, the other dragged at his side, scraping pain up every nerve he had.
“You can’t do anything, not now!” Akumeh growled, shoving him back down. Madoc couldn’t help the whimper as his leg went a-Fire with pain. Akumeh shot him a remorseful glance, then shouted upwards. “Go, ahlóssa! Go for Sarinak! Bring help!”
Kuli was no longer there. But Laocha, obedient, whirled and disappeared.
Akumeh took a few running steps, dove after Tokela. Madoc watched, frightened and furious and frustrated, chest heaving like a bellows.
You can’t do anything!
Madoc couldn’t, but Akumeh would, and Tokela, and Laocha… she would bring help—where was Kuli?—but she had to. These kind of things couldn’t truly happen; they were tales to frighten ahlóssa, something only heard about, things that only happened to other people. It didn’t happen to your cousins, it didn’t happen to people you knew. Not like this. It couldn’t.
As if a herdbeast had suddenly kicked him in the gut, Madoc fell back. Lay there, useless and gasping as landed fishKin, memory and reason flooding in where Wind had gone absent.
Couldn’t? Ai, but it could. It had.
Tokela’s sire and dam, after all, had drowned.
Madoc let out a gasp. Wind filled his lungs, an intoxication to match Tokela’s display of dizzying strength. All of it made abrupt sense—denial, insistence—and for the first time Madoc became aware of what this one, inconceivable happening would mean to Tokela.
Or at least what Madoc thought it should mean. They’d never spoken of it. They’d shared many things, but not this. Never this. Had Tokela seen his parents drown? Or had it been like with Anahli?—carried away, wrack upon the current, a broken doll tossed upon River…
That hit hardest, racked Madoc over and choked him, making him want to puke until his vision turned to blood-coloured soot. Anahli. Anahli, and Tokela, and…
You can’t do anything!
Madoc snarled, then started to crawl towards River.
He didn’t need both legs to swim.
I have her.
She means Anahli and he knows it; River is speaking to him… speaking to him in thisnow with more than feelings and images crowding in his brain begging interpretation.
It is language. It is talk.
Tokela swims, breasting sleek and fast as any namesake of otterKin. His arms already feel torn from their sockets, his head ringing in the wake of the weir’s passage, reason seeping from him as steadily as the blood he leaves behind, a mere darker cloud in already-copper waters. He growls denial of it, breath hitching in the back of his throat.
She cannot take this, too. Does She not already have everything? Has She not already taken everything from him? He is helpless again, helpless before Her as the ahlóssa who found his parents on Her bank…
Not helpless, my own. If you want her, then you must come to Me.
Tokela dives deep even before his thoughts have a chance to surface, following a will that is his, but not.
She has Anahli.
And I will have you. Listen, my own. Listen, and do not shut me away, and I shall tell you all the secrets you have shunned.
He glides through coppery half light as easily if he breathes water instead of air, hears the hollow echoes of his movement, feels
