Chapter Sixteen

“WHY DID THEY still set up the nestling? Why aren’t they canceling Lunamez?” Aon demands angrily, of no one in particular.

Mama, her hand being squeezed by P’Tal on her left, leans over to put her forehead on Aon’s shoulder. A droplet of clear liquid slips down his arm, and though it’s gotten warm in the infirmary with so many people and so many medicinal brews on the make, I know it’s not sweat.

Zeel raises quer deep brown eyes and runs a hand over quer nearly bald head and down quer face, stopping to fiddle distractedly with the silver ring poking out of the expanse of quer broad, flat nose. Quer thick chest muscles twitch as the vein in quer neck throbs. “We can’t stop all of Lunav moving, Ay,” Zeel says, quer thick, deep voice rumbling over us all, even as Blaze takes a rattling, half-conscious breath. P’Tal flinches and Mama lifts her head from Aon’s shoulder so she can lean closer to him. Aora observes their closeness with a small furrow of her brow, her eyes flickering back to her young one almost immediately.

Aon’s eyes are wide as he nods, though he’s clearly unsatisfied with the answer. When Zeel looks away, he turns to me. “Why not?” his body asks me.

I know what he means.

“Que was just playing in the Forest… that redheaded Hand, the second-in-command, brought quer to us… que was just playing, and then que just… started developing the pustules…”

Aora had repeated the story of how the Hand, Richard, had found Blaze. There was no warning, no prior sickness. No explanation except the constant risk of the plague, the constant risk of its resurgence. And if que’d played near anything that someone from the Samp had passed through, the Samp where they’d had a small outbreak lately…

Aora’s numb processing, over and over again, of how this could have happened, rings out in my ears, as the final preparations for Lunamez rise around us outside. Shouts of “good season, good Lunamez” and the squeals of young ones tumbling through the Gathering meld with her disbelief, her trying to convince herself that it’s true. Her young one is dying, with no hope of a cure.

I listen to all of it, numb as the Growers outside twist the Energies to conjure up the ingredients for Lunamez stew into massive bronze pots over enormous, floating pits of fire. In the midst of all this jovial chaos, the eight of us hold vigil with a rapidly weakening Blaze inside.

Zeel and Aora; P’Tal won’t let go of Mama’s hand, and it has me wondering just how close they were when they were nears; Mom and Jax; Aon, because he refuses to leave as much as we try to remind him that Blaze wouldn’t want him to miss his first Lunamez; and me, because my family is here and because I’m stuck until my head stops spinning when I sit up.

The flap to the infirmary tent opens slightly, tentatively, and we all turn to stare at the newcomer. I grin faintly.

“Shouldn’t you be getting ready, Kashat? Big day for you tomorrow.” Jax glances up from his feverish mixing of herbs and Energies that should help ease some of Blaze’s agony.

“It is, yeah.” But Kashat isn’t looking at Jax. His eyes have fallen on Blaze’s lopsided form and won’t let go. I reach a hand out over my head to touch his hovering knee. He starts and stares down at me like he’s trying to remember something.

“Jax, Faye, is Sadie all right to come outside for a little bit? I’ll help her fly. I…I need her help with something.” Mom and Jax exchange a long look.

“She’s going to insist she can fly, and she can’t, Kash, so hold her at all times,” Mom tells him. I mutter wordlessly under my breath, and though Aon’s eyes are locked on Blaze’s oblivious form, the corners of his lips twitch upward slightly. A good sign, I think. I hope.

I try to drag myself up. Mom gives me a pointed look and I mutter some more as I let Kashat help drag me off my cot.

A hushed murmur rises up when we flutter outside of the tent, with faeries, centaurs, and Hands alike giving us a wide berth. I raise my eyebrows at Kashat, and he shakes his shoulders back and forth as much as he can while supporting most of my weight, his arm under my wing sprouts and mine tightly under his. “They know the plague only spreads after…death…but you know, the palace is all about how exposing Dreamers to un-Sliced young ones can spread the plague. Don’t know how that’s supposed to make sense, but I guess it’s getting people nervous.” He raises his voice, half shouting, to no one in particular, and to everyone, who are backing away as we fly together. “Even though the palace’s lies make no kind of sense!”

I smirk because it’s something Lerian would do, even as the muttering around us increases.

“Where are we going?”

Kashat just grins sideways at me. “Up,” he says, and starts ascending from our low hover. I gasp as I realize that he’s taking me to the nestling.

Every season at Lunamez, the Lunamez learning pod is tasked with performing at the accounting, passing on their own understanding of our history, our faith, through the story they put together. Kashat has been working hard at it this season, and it shows through the nestling.

A woven stage for the performance, the nestling is enchanted to float amongst the treetops on the southernmost edge of the Gathering. It has a long, sturdy platform so the centaur performers can be elevated with the faeries, but that’s not the impressive part. This season, Kashat and the others designed it as deep orange, bucket-shaped, with tendrils emerging from the ends, wrapping the performance space in a sealike embrace.

And that’s where we’re heading.

When Kashat approaches, the faeries that are twisting the Energies to make sure it stays afloat during the accounting flitter away somberly. I furrow my brow. “They know your family is close to P’Tal’s. They know you’re…mourning.”

I grunt. “No one else seems to care. Everyone else seems to just care about catching the plague.” I wiggle my fingers grotesquely, and Kashat sighs.

“Yeah, but my learning pod doesn’t fall into the palace lies.” I arch an eyebrow at him. “You’ll see.”

“Do you actually need my help with anything, Kash?” He settles me into a little nook in the deepest part of the basketlike structure. Probably no one can see us from here. A dull curiosity grows in me.

Kashat’s eyes sweep around before he asks wordlessly, moving his body rather than his lips, “Have Jax and your mom talked to you yet?”

“About?”

A pause, and I can’t tell if he’s being dramatic or cautious.

“Your Dreaming.”

I almost jump up, but the wave of dizziness that sweeps over me keeps me in place.

“They told you?” I whisper-shout. He clamps a hand over my mouth and shakes his shoulders back and forth.

“Last night when you were unconscious, the Controller came to the infirmary with the head Slicer about Blaze. They were both furious about the infection. Anyway, point is that your growns are worried that because the Controller and Head Slicer are both obviously powerfully connected to the Energies, they’ll sense the barrier your mom puts around you when you sleep so you don’t move around when you Dream.”

I blink. They really did tell him everything. Talking about all this with someone other than Lerian is surreal. And cleansing. I’m almost giddy. And terrified. My head spins, and I’m not sure if it’s the wound or the casual way he’s talking about my Dreaming.

I think, unbidden, of Leece, the despair in his eyes when they arrested him. When they took Mara to the Pits alongside him.

“Since you’re going to have to stay in the infirmary for the next few sunups, and you’ll be all exposed while you’re sleeping, I have to tell you our plan. Remember I told you I was working with Jax and some others to restore Dreaming?” I nod. How could I forget? “They want me to teach you a technique we’ve been using to shield our efforts from manifesting physically. Jax has been meaning to teach you himself, but with everything that’s going on…”

I nod again, numbly. Will I finally be able to sleep outside of the Plains without Mama’s barrier holding me tightly in place?

“It’s pretty easy, really. I just have to give you the impression of the spell.” He pauses, waiting for my consent. I give it.

A warm, almost overwhelmingly hot sensation floods my body, tickling each of my limbs, shuttling back and forth across my core. Then the heat turns to ice, and I shudder, but somehow don’t feel unpleasantly cold after the first moment. My head feels remarkably clear, and I wonder if somehow this spell can help my wound too. I dimly make a note to tell Jax about its potential healing properties.

A wave of thin, purple strands of Energy seeps out of Kashat’s steady fingertips and into mine. I feel them swimming through my bloodstream like small, wriggling worms, splitting at my shoulders so some go up my neck through to my head, and some go down through my chest, my legs, my toes. I try not to squirm at the extremely odd sensation. I fail.

Kashat watches almost hungrily. After a few moments, the heat, the cold, the wormlike Energy strands, all fade into memory. My body relaxes, and the throbbing returns to my head at full force. I groan. So much for healing properties.

“Did it work?”

“I uh…I think so. I’ll just…I’ll just call that up before I sleep, right?” He nods, looking me up and down like he’s examining his prize work.

“All right, let’s get you back.” He gestures around him proudly. “Still have some work to do!”

He half assists, half carries me back down to the infirmary platform. My mind is spinning. If his spell works, I’ll be able to sleep wherever I want, my Dreams undetected. If his spell works, I’m safe. Forever. Maybe. Everything makes sense and nothing makes sense. I decide to think about it later, when my head is spinning less.

No one, it seems, has moved in the infirmary; everyone is still attending to a mostly unconscious Blaze. Mom’s wiping the new pustules of blood appearing on quer face, using a small vial to drop sizzling, clear liquid onto them. She glances up when Kashat opens the infirmary flap and helps me back into my cot.

“Is it done?” she asks, and Jax looks up from his spell work too.

Kashat nods solemnly, Mama runs a relieved and gentle hand over my cheek, and I fall fast asleep.

 

“SADIE,” MAMA IS whispering. “Sadie, sherba, come. Your mother and Jax say it’s all right to take you outside for the threading, as long as you don’t try to fly alone.”

I breathe deeply and try to crack open my heavy eyes. “It’s Lunamez already?”

I hear her smile more than I see it. “You fell asleep, sherba.”

“How’s Blaze?”

No response. I open my eyes wildly and look across the infirmary. Que’s still there, still with quer chest rising and falling. Still with quer breath rattling. At least we can all be around quer. Que won’t be contagious until after que dies. One strange blessing of the plague: people don’t have to die alone and untouched, at least.

I sigh and let Mama and Mom, who’s hovered over, help me sit up. I look at her questioningly. “Jax is going to stay with Blaze. I want to spend Lunamez with my daughter. I’ll be right outside if he needs me.”

“Aon?”

Mom and Mama exchange a glance. “Blaze woke up at sunup, wanting to know what day it is. Que told Aon in no uncertain terms that he’s to attend the ceremonies.” Mom sighs. “He’s outside, brooding.”

I nod painfully and my growns help me up. Jax grimaces at us as we leave. “Good season,” he calls so softly I almost don’t hear him, his rich voice tinged with tired bitterness.

I blink rapidly as we emerge into the day. The air is still thick with sunup moisture, but it’s also thick with faeries, with calls for a good season, with squeals of joy and flutterings of anticipation; and with Hands, backs straight and muscles tensed, eyes everywhere and nowhere at once. Their uniforms look freshly cleaned, almost sparkling white, but their faces are all stone.

By instinct, I almost try to guide Mom and Mama—both of whom have firm arms under my wing spouts, Mama basically supporting me from underneath because of the way Sampians tend to fly—over to Rada’s platform. Her grown Lunamez breads and stew are always the best.

My heart lurches when I realize she’s not there. When I remember that they dismantled her platform, even after we tried to not let them. Even after I got Lerian a slam in the face that probably made her head spin like mine is doing now.

I wonder if Rada’s seen Leece and Mara in the Pits, or if they keep everyone alone. I wonder if she has track of the time; if she knows it’s Lunamez. If she’s asleep right now and Dreaming one of us and getting to celebrate that way.

I wonder if she’s alive to be Dreaming.

As Mom and Mama fly me toward Aon, people give us a wide berth, parting in the sky for us with wide eyes and soft mutterings. Mama and Mom ignore them expertly.

We find Aon, sitting on the grass, leaning against the cage he was once imprisoned in. This space, the center of the Gathering, is usually reserved for the faeries that can’t fly, or can’t fly for long; everyone keeps a clear a path in the sky between this spot and the nestling. This harvest, we’re among a few elders, growns, and young ones, using the imposition of the cage as an advantage, as something to lean against. Aon’s face is impassive, but both his eyelids are open wide, drinking in everything like medicine.

I put my forehead to his shoulder as our growns get permission from the grass below to sit me down next to him. He tilts his head to rest it on mine, delicately avoiding my now closed but still throbbing wound. Affection for my little sibling—well, now, my little brother—surges inside me.

Mom and Mama fly off to get us grown breakfast, and as soon as they disappear into the crowd, the Controller steps out from the mix. She looks down at Aon and me for a beat, and none of us speak. When Aon’s body goes completely stiff, the skin behind her eyes tighten. “How is your friend?” she asks him in our language.

“Dying,” Aon deadpans, and the Controller closes her eyes and sighs.

“How is que, Sadie? And how’s your head?” she tries instead.

I blink up at her. “Am I supposed to believe you care? About my head or about Blaze? What do you care if que dies of the blood plague? Humans are the reason the plague exists anyway; bet you’d be happy if we all just dropped dead from it.”

The Controller looks like I smacked her across the face for a long, long moment. Aon’s still little body tenses near me and I ready myself to shift in front of him in case she retaliates physically. She doesn’t. She just speaks, in an unfamiliar, far off kind of voice, Grovian gone, replaced by cold Highlander non.

“Isn’t Lunamez supposed to be about new beginnings for your people?”

I scoff and refuse to look at her, steel myself against the open, soft look on her face. I won’t let her convince me that she gives a damn about us. I can’t. “Kinda hard to have a new beginning with someone who’s locking away your people, wouldn’t you think?”

Mom and Mama return just as Evelyn opens her mouth to respond.

“Our young ones have quite enough going on right now, Controller. Maybe save the interrogations for later?” Mama scathes.

“I wasn’t—” Evelyn objects before she seems to realize that the Controller, even an Izlanian one, doesn’t need to justify herself to a grieving family of mere faeries. She raises her chin with dignity and sweeps away after sending one last, unreadable look at me.

As she goes, Mama mutters a swear that has Aon giggling and Mom saying, “Hazal, it’s Lunamez!” But the corners of her mouth are twitching.

By the time they return and we bite into the sweetened Lunamez breads, a silence rises in the Gathering.

The grass, sliced short by the king’s Registry though it’s been, waves about in anticipation. I lower my fingers to caress the grassy shoots nearest me, and they tingle gently in response. I sigh and burrow deeper into Aon’s shoulder, my eyes, like everyone else’s, fixed on the spot where the tunnel to the Underland opens up in the Forest.

“What’s everyone waiting for?” he asks me. I just hold up a finger.

“Wait for it.” I don’t tell him that Rada used to lead this part of the celebration, calling her people from the Underland into the Gathering. Today, it’s Tamzel, trotting over to the edge of the Gathering along with an elder faerie with curly black hair streaked with gray; que sweeps the hair out of quer face and shakes quer shoulders at Tamzel as a hush falls over all the faeries.

Tamzel stamps her hind legs four times and gives a loud whinny; at the same moment, the elder faerie twists the Energies to conjure orange and green sparks into the sky. In response to these calls, an enormous thunder arises as the centaurs storm up the tunnel and spill out of the Forest’s edge into the Gathering. Lerian leads the charge of unranked centaurs behind the Council leaders, bursting into the Gathering with her eyes bright and her face nearly covered in delicately patterned silt from the Flowing. Her gaze finds mine as cheers arise and young ones from music learning pods strike up songs and weave intricate melodies into our bones.

I can’t dance—Jax and Mom would never allow it—but I push Aon up and away from me as Mom and Mama extend their hands to pull him up into the celebration. In true Grovian fashion, there is no preamble to the movement; it just begins. All around me, other faeries that can’t fly are joining hands with centaurs and with low-flying faeries, moving whatever parts of their bodies they can, if only their eyes, in tune with the rhythm of the bodies, of the songs. Usually, I dance with Jax. Usually, I dance with Lerian. This harvest, my heart sinks. Lerian’s fingers are linked with other centaur nears, with E’rix.

My fingers feel empty.

I lean my head against the bars of the cage behind me as Grovians blaze patterns along with the songs rising up from all the edges of the Gathering. All around me, faeries and centaurs twirl and twist and sing. Even Aon is smiling reluctantly now as Mama moves ridiculously in front of him. They flow like one liquid creature around the cage the Controller placed in the center of us all.

My swiveling gaze finds the infirmary tent; Jax has thrust open the flap, and repositioned Blaze’s cot so que can see out into the Gathering without moving much. Quer first Lunamez.

And quer last.

I blink hard, and my face feels wet.

As the dancing crescendos into a veritable mess of bodies, of young ones’ yelps and growns’ laughter, centaur calls rise. Lerian even dances her way toward me, her eyes hard but sparkling. Aon looks nervous, and I gesture for him to pull me to my feet. He grabs one hand, and Lerian lets a hand down to grab my other one. Aon and I both look up at her, bewildered, and she shrugs as she yanks me up.

“It’s Lunamez.” Her tone is softer than usual, even though she’s shouting to be heard above the din. “And it’s time to call them!”

I grin and nudge Aon. “Here goes,” I tell him and his gaze shifts to the infirmary.

As the centaur calls rise higher and higher, all the faeries who can twist the Energies become still in response. Most of our eyes flutter closed, and Lerian flinches slightly as she prepares for so many of us to summon the Energies at once. The Hands tense, but it looks like they’ve been warned about this part of the celebrations, because they do nothing.

My own eyes finally drift closed as the message starts to build in the core of feeling underneath my belly, my insides glowing. I feel distinctly every Energy wave in my body, can trace the ways the other faeries are summoning an identical spell to mine, radiating out from our middles. I curl in on myself as I concentrate the melding of the Energies into the enchanted message we’re all building to the dragons. I send up a silent prayer to Lunara that she’ll keep them safe, that this Lunamez will be noteworthy for nothing more than being a great holiday.

It is, after all, the dragons’ holiday as much as it is ours. Maybe even more so.

Like a frozen wave bursting out of its shell after a long and deep cold, warm and soothing magic shoots through my insides. My tightly muscled arms shudder a bit right before midday yellow and sunset orange waves of contorted Energies billow out of my fingertips. They ripple, along with those being sent up by the faeries around me, up into the cloudless sky and explode in fluorescent aquas and lavenders.

A hushed silence falls on the Gathering as even the youngest of the young ones simply watch the signal we’ve sent above us; or, more accurately, watch for the response to the signal we’ve sent.

And sure enough, within minutes, shouts rise up amongst those flying higher than others, those with the best sight.

“Hands!” comes Richard’s clipped voice above the excited tumult. “Dragons approaching!” At his warning, nearly every Hand in the Gathering loads their bows and point them at the sky.

They are preparing for another massacre.