“What’s obvious?” demanded Bee.
“He went home to ask the hunters of his village to hunt for me in the spirit world.”
“His actions you understand perfectly,” said his grandmother.
“It’s what I would do, in his place,” I said.
“Very noble of you, I’m sure, Cat,” retorted Bee, “but it must be many days’ ride from Adurnam to his village, so he can’t have gotten there yet.”
“The days pass differently here. An hour here might be a week there. He would have plenty of time to go ask his kinsmen for help. I understand the locket is a talisman. But I don’t understand how you are come here, Grandmother.”
She said nothing. Heat settled over us in a sweltering mantle.
“You must be dead.” My words emerged stiffly.
Bee sat back with an exhalation.
Fati looked at me, still saying nothing.
“He must have found you when you were dying. Because the dead cross over into the spirit world, he asked you to seek me out once you got here. I never thought…” My fingers curled over the locket. “If you’re here, then my parents are here somewhere as well. I could find them.”
“Maestressa, please forgive our bad manners.” Bee shifted forward. “I hope you suffered no pain. I hope we find you at peace. I’m sorry.”
“For what are you sorry?” she said with a gentle smile. “The crossing awaits us all.”
Belatedly I lowered my gaze, as one did with elders. I absolutely believed she was who she claimed to be, although I could not explain why. “My apologies, Grandmother. You and the villagers helped me at great risk to yourselves. When I said I wasn’t sure I could trust you, when I was there in your house, I didn’t mean it to be rude.”
“Mmm. Yes. You were rude. But you were frightened, and you are young. We all make mistakes.”
“You are generous to forgive me.”
“Have I forgiven you? I choose to help Vai because he is a very good boy.”
“He wasn’t that good of a boy,” I muttered. “He was arrogant, contemptuous, and unkind.”
“Then he forgot the manners his mother and I taught him.” She bent a gaze on me that made me duck my head like a scolded child. “Do you appreciate what he has done? To come so far, against the will of the mansa, is no light choice for him.”
“I appreciate his efforts to make sure Four Moons House doesn’t recapture us. But I can’t believe the mansa would do anything to harm such a powerful young cold mage.”
“I do not believe you comprehend what he risks for you. You think you know what it means to be born into clientage, to be bound by law and custom to serve another, but you do not know.”
“We in the Kena’ani are raised to serve our households,” I retorted, not nearly as belligerently as I might have. “As I did, when my aunt and uncle gave me to Four Moons House against my will. They would have given me to whatever cold mage came to collect me. It happened to be him.”
“Do you suppose that was chance? Your destiny was chosen before you were born.”
“I don’t believe that!”
“I don’t either,” said Bee stoutly, and loyally. “Although I do have to wonder why I was cursed with this gift of dreaming.”
“You’re no help,” I muttered with a grimace at Bee.
Fati gave me a look that made me feel small and petty. “He placed three strands of his hair behind the portrait in the locket, to help you find him. A thread ties you together, because of the binding the djeli wove over you, which is a chain that reaches between worlds. Seek him in your heart, and you will know where he is. But if you have no heart to seek him, then he is the one who will search in vain.”
“Cat didn’t ask to be married to him,” said Bee. “I am sure you cherish your grandson. I’m sure he is loyal to his family. But it isn’t fair to scold her as if she had asked for a pretty bauble and then tossed it carelessly away because it didn’t match her gown. She was betrayed by my mother and father, by our entire clan. She shouldn’t be taken to task for something she never asked for.”
“It’s all right, Bee,” I said, for I couldn’t bear to see his grandmother’s expression harden into disapproval. “My apologies for my sharp tongue, Grandmother. I can’t truly understand what it means for your village to have endured clientage for so many generations. We studied law at the academy, but…well…it was words in a book. I admit I feel a more personal concern now.”
“You can be sure,” said Fati, “that Four Moons House has bound you tightly to him. And he belongs to them, just as my village does. When they wish to make use of you, they will do so.”
“Unless I free myself.”
“Do you think it is so easy to free yourself??”
I glanced at Bee, and held my tongue.
Fati raised her eyebrows as if she knew we had secrets we weren’t sharing. “Anyway, girls, enough talking. We must seek a path or a warded place.” She rose, brushed off her skirts, and walked away from the river.
Bee and I exchanged a glance.
“I like her!” whispered Bee.
“The hunters will cross at Imbolc,” Fati called over her shoulder. “My grandson plans to be with them.”
“How romantical!” said Bee as we hurried after her. “I wish some man would rescue me!”
“Isn’t that what Legate Amadou Barry was trying to do? During the riot? Rescue you?”
“He was trying to capture and cage me,” she snapped.
And wasn’t that what Andevai would end up doing, if he brought me back to Four Moons House? Uneasiness rose in my heart, like a chain being reeled in. The world seemed made of cages. Walking gave me something to do instead of think about chained marriages and forbidding mage Houses and a voice commanding me to come now. We strode through a grassy landscape, skirting thickets of flowering bushes. Tiny translucent unicorns flitted between the blooms, wings flashing like thinnest glass.
Bee ventured closer. “How pretty!”
They coalesced into a swarm and stung at her. Stumbling away, she batted at the cloud as a haze of scintillant wings engulfed her. I swept my sword back and forth through them until they scattered to settle on the bushes, snorting, with teeth bared.
“Ah!” she said, pressing a hand to her face. “They attacked me!”
Fati said, “Let me see your chin.”
After a pause, Bee lowered her hand. Several bumps swelled redly, but otherwise she appeared unharmed. “Nasty creatures!”
A few took to the air, and I brandished my sword, and they retreated.
“Stay beside me,” said Fati.
We walked on. In places, the ground bottomed into swales, thick with white-barked aspens, their round leaves flashing like mirrors. Butterflies and dragonflies winked where pools of water had given birth to thickets of reeds and flowering lilies. Overhead, a pair of crows paced us.
“Do all the dead bide in the spirit world?” I asked. “Could I really find my parents?”
Fati had a long stride. “See this grass around us? You might say it comes from a seed, but a seed alone is nothing. It needs water and soil, and it needs the desire to grow. Without these, no grass can become grass. No thing is only one thing unchanging. Right now I walk in the body in which I walked on the other side. This form remains mine only until the tide of the spirit world reaches me. Then I will change, as all things change. So I cannot know what form your parents have taken, or how they have changed.”
“Vai said that those who are caught in the tide of a dragon’s dream never come back.”
“How can you come back if you have not departed?” A smile softened her mouth. “Vai is a very clever and a very obedient and a very hard-working boy, but I am sorry to tell you, Cat, that he does not know everything he thinks he does.”
Bee laughed.
I said, “But if all the dead people come here after they die, then where are they all?”
“A fish sees the eagle only as a shadow within the water, but the eagle sees the fish for what it is.”
I scratched my bruised chin. “You’re saying we can’t look at things here in the spirit world and assume that what we think we see means what we think we see is what we think it is.”