Shada
men’s awed faces, Shada stepped into her wagon and shut the door. The tingling cloud surrounding her fell away and reformed as the Lady, her face gently concerned.
“My dear,” she hummed, “you frightened me. I wish you had warned me before you went into the swamp.”
Now that she was back in the wagon’s familiar confines, Shada’s heart slowed to its regular pace. The rush of energy drained away, replaced by illness and sleepiness.
“I apologize, Lady,” she replied. “I don’t know if I did the right thing. The trees were about to attack the wagon when it fell. I didn’t want anyone else to die.”
“Of course not, child.” The Lady’s tone was a pat on the head. “It’s only natural for a kind soul like yours. But I don’t think you realize the danger you were in.”
It was a strange thing to say. Shada could hardly have missed the danger unless some of it was invisible. “Perhaps not,” she said.
“They are good men. I love each of them more than you know. But not all will return from the road we are taking.”
Still dripping wet, Shada undressed. It was getting easier to change her clothes in front of the Lady. As she pulled on dry trousers, Shada asked, “But why not save them if we can?”
“Save them from what? From entering the womb of the Goddess? They have already been saved in the most important way. When they return to Huire’s embrace, this world will be an unpleasant memory.”
The wagon shifted as the column started moving. Shada sat on her cot. She was close to the heart of something, and her desire for an answer overcame her fear. “But you didn’t let me die.”
The Lady frowned. “That should not comfort you. Your purpose is harder. Unlike those who died today, you have much more suffering in store.”
Shada remembered seeing the bishop and his priest dragged from the water, half-drowned. She thought of Nor emerging from the overturned wagon and desperately grasping her hand, his pale eyes intent on her face. After they reached the road, she had excused herself curtly from his presence, uncomfortable with his profuse, reverent thanks. “I don’t know what I meant to do. Those trees would have killed me if you hadn’t stopped them.”
“I intervened because it is important that you stay alive for now. The men we saved were meant to die here. In dying, they would have accomplished their purposes and avoided the horrors that await those still living.”
“I was so afraid for them,” said Shada. “I didn’t think I was brave enough to do what I did. I felt like a different person.”
“We have many faces,” the Lady replied. Her frown stretched to the size of a tragic theatrical mask.
“When I asked you to help them…” Shada paused. Watching the men fall from the tipping wagon, she had not just asked, she had begged. When the Lady refused, Shada had watched until she couldn’t bear it. “I didn’t understand why you did nothing. I’m afraid to tell you all the things I felt. Though of course you’ll guess them all.”
“And when I did not obey your wishes, you tried for yourself.”
“Yes.” There was no way around it.
“What you did was brave, and you had the best intentions. But you lack faith. Do you think I would let those men die if they would be better off alive?”
“You mean, they had served their purpose,” Shada said.
“They would have had they died. Meeting their natural ends would have completed the circles of their lives. Because I intervened—for you—the men are now unfinished, adrift. The Goddess’s hand has come only to point the way, not to carry her people through their ordeals. Next time I refuse to help the company with some threat—thus endangering my existence by leaving my box—it will be harder for the men to accept. They will wonder why I made this exception.”
The scum of the swamp dried and itched on Shada’s limbs. “I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t you? I told you of your place in the plan. You are indispensable. When you entered the swamp, did you expect to die?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I doubt it. I think you knew I would help you.”
“It… occurred to me,” she admitted. “I wasn’t sure. I thought…” Her mind turned. She had thought more things in those moments than she could recall.
The Lady filled the silence. “You hoped to help them. If I helped you—”
“I didn’t see how it was wrong,” Shada interrupted.
“You didn’t trust me.”
The skin of Shada’s face shrank against her bones. “I…”
“You committed a pair of sins today, my dear.” The Lady placed her buzzing, immaterial fingers under Shada’s chin. “First, you believed that you, above Huire, knew what was right for your fellows. Second, you took advantage of your own importance to force me to intervene.”
Sickness churned in Shada’s belly. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“Our goals are not always conscious. Ignorance of your feelings shows a lack of self-reflection.”
Shada could barely squeeze words out of her throat. “I just didn’t want them to die.”
“Your desires are not paramount,” said the Lady with finality. “Neither are mine. We are each playing parts in a larger story, and none of us know its true shape.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Remorse is the first step. The second is change. Will you take my words into your heart and use them?”
“I can. I will.” Shada forbade herself to think otherwise. The truth was, part of her wished she had entered the swamp sooner. She and the Lady could have saved more lives. Maybe if she told herself she was wrong enough times, she would believe it.
The Lady’s frown almost vanished. Her eyes swelled with sympathy. “Don’t be discouraged. This morning, you behaved remarkably. You convinced the captain to change his plans. You’re showing I was right to choose you as caretaker.”
“It was like stepping off a cliff,” said Shada. “I did it because I had to.” She paused. “When you asked me to be your caretaker, I ran away because the role was too big for me. I didn’t think I was capable.”
“I remember,” the Lady replied. “The bishop asked me to forget you and find someone else. He hoped to take on the role himself. But I knew you would return.”
“Every bad thing that happens to me or my family starts with being noticed.” Shada had forgotten if she was answering a question or what the question had been. “I wanted to hide until everyone went away. But hiding felt worse. Poisonous. I won’t do that again.”
“Do not confuse courage with righteousness. No one likes pain. But when it is our duty to face it and we fail, we must at least embrace sorrow. Through remorse we scour ourselves of impurity.
“You are discovering your power. You can create change. But change brought about through evil turns to evil.”
“Forgive my boldness,” said Shada. Even the wagon was no longer safe.
“Your boldness needs no forgiveness. But you must direct it with pure motives.” The Lady’s ghostly mouth bent up at its corners. Shada looked away without meaning to.
Nearby, the box where the Lady dwelt sat partly open. As Shada pondered it, someone knocked on the wagon’s door. Before she could turn away, the Lady hummed past her, collapsing into the box like an explosion in reverse. The box’s door shut.
Shada had never seen the Lady enter the box up close. She took a breath to compose herself after the bizarre sight, then she answered the door.
It was Nor, soaking and haggard. He still wore the tatters of his robe. His wrist had been hastily bandaged, but it would take a blanket to cover all his scrapes and bruises.
Shada so dreaded enduring more adoration—especially from someone she admired—that she almost shut the door. Instead, she opened it wide enough to admit her face and blurted, “You’re very welcome, Brother Nor.”
His brow furrowed in confusion, and she realized she had miscalculated. He responded slowly, in his serious way. “I don’t want to bother you, Caretaker. But I think I did after you saved me. I said too much. I was feeling a lot of things. By all rights, I should have died.”
This was not what she had expected. She shifted her weight, no longer determined to close the door quickly.
He mistook the action for impatience. “I’ll be brief. I’m sorry I acted so strange. Gripping your hand like that and thanking you over and over. That’s all.”
He shivered. He had been shivering all along, but she had not noticed. The sight reminded her what a terrible experience he had been through.
She wanted to hug him, reassure him, but thought better of it. A man like him would hate being pitied. “No apology is needed, Nor. I did what was right.”
A little knot of worry formed in her belly as she remembered the Lady was listening. What Shada had done wasn’t right. She should have stayed out of danger and let Nor die. But she could not yet make herself believe that, much less say it to Nor. She knew being the caretaker could mean distancing herself from the others. Maybe this was why. It made honesty impossible.
Feeling trapped by the conversation, she began to excuse herself. “Well—”
He said the same thing at the same time, and they both paused so the other could continue.
During the pause, she noticed a sound. It was a high note, faint but impossible to ignore once heard.
The noise grew painful. It came from outside, where voices were rising, and from above. Nor stepped back to look as nearby timber shattered with a crash. Shada jumped out of the wagon.
The trees had closed in on the road as it left the swamp. To one side behind the column, dust settled where a strip of wiry trees had fallen. Several men stood there and peered into the woods. As more gathered, they held their arms to their faces.
She and Nor trotted over to join them. As they approached, she buried her nose in her sleeve. The odor was stunning—sweat, blood, and unwashed bodies.
An object as flat and broad as a hut’s roof rested on trees it had mowed down. It was a leaf of incredible proportions. The howl it had made swooping over the trees was now a wavering, grating mewl.
The captain rode up at dangerous speed. He regarded the leaf grimly but without surprise.
“Emberly!” someone exclaimed in a harsh croak.
Shada turned to see a bloody half corpse standing on the road, wrapped in a shawl. It was Bishop Arumin, his face gaunt, chest bandaged. Behind him stood Dr. Staubel, unable to control his patient.
The bishop’s appearance alarmed Shada. He did not appear capable of standing, but there he was.
Emberly’s eyes widened. “Bishop?”
“Do you know what that is?” Arumin’s shout ended in a coughing fit.
“I know.”
Arumin’s voice cracked. He looked like a lunatic ranting about the world’s end. “You must destroy it!”
“We will.”
On the captain’s orders, several soldiers walked out into the deep mud. They dragged the leaf toward the road by its stem, a rotted shaft as thick as Shada’s thigh. The leaf seemed surprisingly light given the damage it had done.
As the men pulled, the leaf wailed louder. Opposite its stem, its edges flared out like wings from its pointed apex. The cries came from there.
The soldiers hoisted the leaf onto the road. Its smell thickened the air. At Emberly’s direction, the men carried it away, down the road toward the edge of the swamp nearby. The leaf moaned.
Emberly finally noticed Shada and Nor. “Caretaker, please return to your wagon.”
Nor whispered to Shada that they should go. But Shada was transfixed.
The apex of the leaf now pointed at her. At its tip, the leaf’s sharp edges met its primary vein and swelled to form a vertical edge like a hatchet.
There, facing her, was a set of bumps and creases that looked like… She denied it. Her mind, seeking order, saw a face. But it could not be. She could forgive herself an occasional hallucination.
Yet from a small cavity in the structure came a voice.
The captain blocked her view with his shoulder and ushered her toward the wagons. Nor followed.
“What is it?” Shada asked.
“I don’t have time to explain,” Emberly snapped. His voice softened. “It’s a signal. It will attract things we do not want to meet. We must leave, though it may be too late.” He shouted to his soldiers, “Quickly!”
Cringing at how comparatively gentle he had been with her, Shada hurried toward her wagon. With a glance and a nod, she parted ways with Nor. She needed to think about how to explain this to the Lady.
She mounted the step into the wagon to see farther down the road. The soldiers carried the leaf into the swamp, where the water submerged the road. Nearby, the writhing vines that had almost drowned Arumin still drifted outward, seeking prey. The men shuffled, turning the leaf so its apex faced the water, and heaved it in with a shout.
It glided briefly on its winglike curves and landed among the vines. Shada’s mouth tasted coppery as the vines found the leaf. Their tendrils sneaked across its broad back and fixed in place. They pulled in all directions. Dark brown fluid spurted from the leaf as it began to tear.
As the vines pulled it under, ripping it apart, the leaf’s cries became a series of shrieks. The sounds were raw and brainless, an expression of pure suffering.
Shada dove into the caravan, slammed the door, and covered her ears. The noise still reached her as surely as the leaf’s smell had.
She did not see the Lady watching her until she dropped her hands. The Lady’s face was blank like a doll’s as she asked, “What happened?”
Shada wished she did not have to talk about it. If only she could rest first. “I don’t know. I…” She stopped. At least it was the truth.
“My dear, there must be more. I know it is difficult, but you must try harder.”
In a jolt of anger, the words slipped from Shada’s mouth: “If I am failing you, go and find out for yourself!”
She stopped, shocked at what she had said. Anger still simmering, she added, “Stop hiding and go out there.”
The Lady was never really silent. The hum like distant insects followed her everywhere. Now it grew louder, though she said nothing. Shada’s face tingled and flushed, but she said nothing either.
The Lady slowly formed a cloud and drained away into her box. Her feet disappeared first. As they went, she said, “I cannot spare you, child. I have already explained that.”
“I know,” said Shada. Her outburst had felt true, and she could hardly hide her feelings from the Lady anyway. But still. “It’s just… something is wrong with all of this. I don’t know what. Maybe it’s me.”
Only the Lady’s chest and head remained. “I will leave you and your monk friend to decide that.”
“Wait,” said Shada. She had been wrong. Always wrong.
The Lady disappeared without another word. Shada was alone. The screams of the dying thing floated over the rumble of wheels.