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After I produce ten mostly-even lengths of cord, Susan shows me how to unwork and rework the ruined ones, still without speaking.
I get faster, less clumsy. The old pile shrinks, a new one forming on the other side of me, until there are none left to fix.
“Congratulations,” Cadence says. “You can now keep up with the toddlers.”
“I seem to remember it taking you more than a day to master these . . .” Susan raises her eyebrows.
“I was two, gran.”
I shove my chair back and head for the door. I don’t have time for this.
“It’s dark out,” says Susan. “And you missed dinner.”
“Not hungry.”
I slam the door, though it’s not Susan I’m angry with and she doesn’t deserve me mistreating her home.
The night is still, but for a late-evening breeze stirring the garden. Good. I don’t want an audience.
“But they’d be so amused,” Cadence says.
I slide my feet apart and bring up my arms, hitting out at the air with closed fists as if I’m facing an invisible opponent.
I need to teach myself to fight at least as well as those kids I saw today. By myself. Within the next fourteen days.
While also mastering everything else they know, because I’m not sure I even have fourteen days to spare away from Ange and the rest of the poor souls stuck within the barrier. Two weeks seems like an impossible amount of time to build my skills, and also far, far too long to wait. But this is the only path forward I can see right now, so I’d better get started.
I don’t have any time to eat, or sleep, or fail—or feel like an idiot. I jab at the air a few more times, aware of just how lame I must look, but a little less chilly with each attempt. When I try a sidekick, I stagger off the path. A dusty, herbal smell springs from the crushed leaves.
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
I scramble out of the garden. Susan stands in the doorway, wrapped in a bold-patterned blanket. Warm light streams out around her.
“Sorry,” I mutter, turning my back on her and planting my feet. “I’ll be careful.”
“Just come inside. Flailing around in the dark won’t get you any closer to passing an assessment or showing up your juniors.”
But the door thumps closed when I make no move to obey. The night seems darker and colder. I check behind me to make sure she’s gone, and try another kick. The garden leaps up and smacks me in the face. I sneeze and roll off a fragrant patch of fresh-crushed herbs.
“The bane of gardens everywhere,” Cadence says. “At least your clumsiness is legendary.”
I drive a fist into the ground and discover it’s not just made of dirt.
“That’ll leave a bruise.”
I chuck the sharp stone in her general direction. Which is nowhere.
“Next time, just toss it at your own head. Maybe it’ll knock something useful loose.”
I brush myself off and limp back to the path. “If I go inside, will you shut up?”
I hope she says yes. I’m sore and shivering and grimy and almost ready to quit— except I can’t.
“You don’t always have to do things the hardest way,” she says, sounding more serious. “You think I don’t want you to get my power back and take down Refuge, too?”
“You’ve done nothing but get in my way since before we got here.”
“They killed my parents. They took my memories, my body. They put you in charge. How could I not want revenge?”
“I was raised by monsters that taught me I was broken. My friends have been killed in front of me—more are probably dying right now. Just when I’d finally found a place and a purpose and the power to stop the dying, I lost it all. And now the one person who was supposed to be on my side won’t stop dragging me down. So, please, tell me again how much better you are at everything,.”
“All right, over there?” A stranger looms in the shadows a few feet away.
I jump at the sound and backpedal for the door before he can get any closer.
The stranger grumbles but doesn’t chase me in. Susan leans out and waves reassuringly over my shoulder. It’s probably just a neighbour out for an evening stroll.
Sudden warmth burns my chilled skin, and the smell of cooking makes my stomach grumble. I slump inside without a word, feeling like the world’s biggest loser.
Susan waits for me to wash and eat before saying anything. She clears away the dishes and hands me one of my twisted cords, not as perfect as Grace’s but still holding its shape, more or less.
“You couldn’t do it this morning. Now you can. What changed?”
I blink, heavy and slow with sudden exhaustion. “I don’t know. “I got better?”
She hums. “Oh? How? When?”
I long to pillow my head on my arms and close my eyes. Instead, I turn the cord over, looking at the fine strands as they melt into one another. “Don’t remember. It just clicked.”
“No.” She taps the back of my hand. “You learned by touch, not thought. Thinking about it didn’t help. Learning where it came from, digging into your motivation to learn, none of that made a difference in your ability.”
I roll the cord between blistered fingers and wince.
“What did you see in the woods?”
I rub my eyes, not sure what brought on this sudden change of topic. “Trees?”
She gives me a look.
“Uh, Grace showed me how to harvest bark so it doesn’t kill the tree, and then we carried it back.”
“Good, what else?”
“We were attacked by a strange monster. Not a water monster, some other kind. Forest-monster, I guess. But then it just kind of went away again. Grace didn’t tell you about it?”
“She did. She said you tried to fight it for her.”
I blush, look down at my hands, scratch at a blister. “I knew she didn’t have magic, so—”
“Neither do you.”
I bite back a retort. She’s right. It had been like that last day in Freedom, standing against the attack, reaching for something to hit back with and finding nothing at the ends of my fingers but air. “I had to do something.”
“Why?” But she doesn’t wait for me to respond. “You wanted to help a friend. Protect her. That’s good but dangerous. You’re a child right now. You don’t have the tools to understand, or to take action.”
I wave the cord at her. “And this is supposed to help?”
“Balance,” she says, taking it from me. “Pull too hard and it breaks. Twist too tightly and it warps; not tightly enough and it unravels. But when you started respecting the material, really feeling it, you stopped hurting it and yourself. That was not a monster today.”
The light rippling over the cord has me so hypnotized I nearly miss her last comment.
“What?”
“The creature you and Grace encountered in the forest. It wasn’t a monster.”
“Sure looked like one.” I shudder: its inhuman form, that whirlwind of cutting leaves it sent at us . . .
“You want to learn to fight.”
It’s not a question. I nod anyway. Obviously.
“Why?”
“To save my home. My friends.”
“Then tomorrow you will learn what makes a monster.”
“I don’t have time to waste.” But the words slur and drag. I’m heavy with tiredness and confusion, and if my frustration can’t even push back the need for sleep, it certainly can’t shake Susan off as she shoos me off to bed.
I stumble against the new bed wedged into my room. Grace curls a little tighter under the covers in the other and groans. I blink, slowly coming to the conclusion that yes, she should be there—and then I yawn, and tumble into darkness.
***
GRACE CHIRPS ME AWAKE too early and keeps up a steady stream of chatter as we eat, garden, tour a new-to-me section of the city that holds workshops, repair shops, plant nurseries and an odd mix of garden-and-laboratory buildings where people wander around scribbling things while prodding at plants or playing with dirt. Then we harvest, cook (or, in my case, burn food and learn some more about composting), eat again, pointlessly twist more slippery strands of tree, progress to simple woven patterns, discuss but don’t actually start working with beads and thread, cook and eat yet again, and practice simple stances and blocks in the garden as night falls.
Turns out most people learn the basics of fighting around here, dreamwalker or no. Grace is happy enough to pass along what she knows, though she says it’s more about understanding your body and maintaining basic fitness than fighting anything, or anyone. Still, what little she’s able to show me is more than I knew this morning.
She changes the subject when I ask about Susan’s cryptic late-night lecture, and Susan refuses to bite when I bring up monsters in passing.
And then I’ve lost another day. I’ve barely learned anything. I have less than two weeks to catch up to and pass the younger students, and I just want to sleep but I can’t afford to, and—
Susan hands me some tea and settles back into her chair. “What did you learn?”
“Nothing useful. I’m running out of time and you made me do chores all day!” If I sound like I’m sulking, it’s only because I am.
“Did I? What a shame.” She sips her tea. “And what did you learn about monsters?”
“They love torturing me?” I cut my eyes at her meaningfully.
Susan smiles. “Good.”
I wonder if I can put in for a transfer. Isn’t there anywhere else I could stay? Another teacher I could be assigned?
“Where do monsters come from?” she continues.
The answer catches in my throat. From the fog. But also from the water, and apparently, from the trees, and—
“Borders,” I say, a little proud of myself for the insight. “They come from the edges of things.”
Susan leans in. “Good. That’s perceptive, and true. But incomplete—you had it right the first time. Monsters come from us. Which is why the creature you saw in the woods yesterday wasn’t one.”
“Sure looked like it.”
“No doubt.” She’s laughing at me.
I stand, eyeing the door.
“Sit down. We’re not done here, not until you know what you can and cannot get into a fight with.”
I keep walking.
“They’re our fault.”
I stop.
“The monsters. The others have always existed—the unseen, or rarely seen, creatures born of wave and wood. But we who could see them knew them as . . . perhaps not friends, but not enemies, either. We left each other alone. Until we didn’t.”
“They look like monsters.”
“They look like themselves. We’re the ones who made monsters of them. They’re of the earth and the waters. When we hurt it, we hurt them. When the damage became too great, they rose against us. It was self-defence.”
I turn on her, getting in her face like she’s the enemy, like she’s the one I have to defeat.
She catches my wrists, the beginnings of a silver mist trickling along her skin. “You’re angry. You’ve seen what they can do. I understand. But it’s our fault as much as theirs.”
“They struck first.”
“No. We did. They responded, tried to stop us. All creatures react to their environments. Theirs was killing them, so they fought back.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know what you and Grace saw in the forest did not want to hurt you. I know what you fought in that poor shattered city of yours desperately wanted to hurt you, and you it.”
“It held us captive! For generations! It killed, over and over again, and wanted more!” My face is hot, fists clenched. I tear away from her and slam the door to my room.
She’s insane. No wonder she hasn’t been teaching me properly—she’s trying to protect the monsters.