Should he empty his veins onto the stones a’Naisgwyr, would he be found cold and limp within a darkening pool of indigo, or carmine?
He was naked of everything but the tiny eating knife that still hung from the thong at his throat. Unsheathing it, he quite methodically put the keen edge to the underside of his forearm and against the thickest vein, indigo pulsing—
“Tokela?” It was thin, wavering. “What are you doing?”
Tokela’s heart lurched up into his throat, descended and hammered like a too-tight drum. “Seeing if I’m still alive,” he told Kuli, and ran the blade along his forearm.
Shallow. Not enough to spurt and fell him before it could be staunched. Only enough to watch the blood well, and to find his breath come easier as it dripped down tawny flesh: sanguine, thick… normal.
“Are you?” Kuli’s voice was small. “Still alive?”
Am I? Is Anahli?
But ai, he knew. Could feel her heart beating, and her breath smooth, in and out, like Wind.
Like she was beside him. Inside him. Part of him.
Wind and Water. Fire and Earth and Spirit and…
Eyes meet eyes.
Is this how Chepiś felt when they Shaped me? Made me?
“You saved Anahli from River.” Kuli padded across the floor both silent and subdued. “She’s still sleeping. Both of you, sleeping so long… it’s already well past midSun meal. Almost dusk.”
Why was Kuli here? He’d seen what had happened. Madoc had seen, and Akumeh had. Likely the tale had been told of what they’d witnessed. He’d seen the fear and loathing in their faces. Surely no one would leave Kuli alone here, with a half… creature.
More likely Kuli had snuck in.
Kuli confirmed this in the next breath. “I was helping Aunt Inhya fold blankets, but she was called away. So I came in to see you.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” It was a growl.
Kuli merely folded down onto hands and knees beside Tokela and began to crawl into his lap.
Tokela should shove him away. Chase him out. River’s voice rushed through Tokela’s own heart, a merciless background descant to his heartbeat, a blood heat sure to drown anything.
If only he had drowned instead of Anahli.
Instead Tokela quivered like a hart in a meadow who listened for the predator’s second step. Found himself leaning against his tiny cousin, letting Kuli wrap skinny arms about him, rock him as if Tokela were the younger. Tried to halt himself as he snaked his arms about Kuli; instead felt the sting of weakness as he buried burning eyes into cinnabar hair and tried to forget the questions:
What is happening? What have I done?
What could I do, given the chance?
None of them mattered. Only the kinship, and comfort, and silence.
Into that silence, Kuli spoke. “You saved my sister. You almost drowned to save her.”
“I… suppose so.”
“I owe you blood debt. That makes us oathbrothers.”
Tokela wanted to laugh in the face of such youthful seriousness—but that same thing sobered him. “When you’re old enough.”
Silence, with Kuli holding to him, wrapped close. Then, “Are you cold, Tokela?”
Gritting his teeth, Tokela bade his shudders to stillness. That stillness merely opened him further to every other movement: Kuli’s heated, wiry frame and quick, shallow breaths, the brine and sweat lingering in his tangled hair, the tingling behind Tokela’s own eyes rising like a water-horse to heat and light and air, eager for River’s call.
“Perhaps,” Kuli considered, “it would be warmer if you had a story for me.”
This did break a laugh from Tokela, though also a half sob. He tried to speak; it truncated into a whisper, “I’m sorry. I’ve no stories in my heart thisnow.”
What have I done? To Anahli? To my parents?
What could I do?
Kuli peered up at him, RainForest eyes wide and unquestioning.
“You must go,” Tokela growled. “They can’t find you here. They can’t know what I’ve done, or…” or they’ll take your sister from you.
Kuli suddenly burrowed against Tokela’s shoulder, no longer comforter, but one in desperate need of comfort. “I think they’re going to send you away, Tokela.”
With shaking fingers, Tokela smoothed the snarled, cinnabar locks, said nothing.
I think they should send me away. Far away.
IT SMELLED… strange.
It gave Madoc a sparking, throbbing pain behind his eyes.
He’d woken, off and on, though he wasn’t sure how many Suns had passed… and now he feigned sleep, eyes narrowed to bare slits, watching as his dam woke and begun tending the smelly clay pot with bits of leaves and bark from a pouch at her hip belt. It was well known that Inyha had brought her birthing-tribe’s herblore to dawnLands, had grown as expert in River and Forest plants. Even the old herbKeeper used Inyha’s tinctures. But this, escaping around the edges of the pulled down flap, was something Madoc had never smelled before. It must be from duskLands.
Memories sparked, a telling of passage. His sire coming in, grimacing at the scent. How they wouldn’t let Madoc move about the few times he’d woke, just lie there with his foot propped and swaddled. How Inhya occasionally rubbed it with smelly, sticky unguents or bathed in salts and herbs. How his sire carried him to the bodysoil trenches. How Madoc had tried to hear what his parents had said that first dark when Madoc had blurted what he never should have, both closed up in their sleeping den, but his leg had foiled him from sneaking close enough.
He knew it couldn’t be good.
They were so… subdued. It worried Madoc all the more. After the intensity of… whatever, whenever… it seemed as if everything had closed down into a small and tight space.
With a huff, Inhya dipped a cup into the pot, wiped its rim on a cloth, and took it over to the window ledge. To cool, Madoc figured—the breeze coming in was misty with falling Rain.
He hoped it wasn’t some concoction he would have to drink—if the smell of it gave him a headache, he could only imagine what the taste would
