CHAPTER TEN

 

KULA WOKE UP and found herself lying within the dark box wrapped in a soft cloak, alone. A grey daylight was taking over from the fire glow so that she could see sky between the broken spars of wood overhead but that wasn’t what grabbed her attention. There was something huge, powerful and very alive close by. A keen sense of self-preservation made her sit bolt upright, clutching the cloak to her. The source of the sensation was immediately apparent. The woman from the box was standing nearby, her back half turned so that Kula could just see her face in profile. The fire shone merrily off the jewels on her dress. She was staring at the burning Draeyads.

As Kula watched she stretched out her right hand and moved it slowly to the invisible barrier that marked the flames’ edge. Instantly every mote of flame inside the burning wood leapt along invisible conduits directly to the tips of her fingers. Within seconds the conduits had changed in girth from threads to ropes and then a moment later from ropes to hawsers of roiling fire.

The woman opened her mouth and Kula wondered if she was going to scream and burn but all she did was take one, enormous inward breath. As it concluded, the last spiralling whirls of white, red, orange and yellow zipped along the line of contact to her hand and were gone. The air shivered, like an animal’s flank when a fly takes off, and then in place of the burning hell there was only the hillside in the morning wind. The breeze lifted the parched leaves of the trees that were no longer on fire—nor had ever been burned, as the soulfire was a spirit affliction and not of the physical world. They were only weak and exhausted with drought. The grass was crisped to hay, the flowers dead, the stalks straw. Between them the shades of the Draeyads had faded to the near-nothing of ghosts now that they were no longer illumined from within. They held out their limbs and looked; they moved and stretched and danced for joy in the cool wash of the wind that promised, if not rain, heavier clouds. Without bodies they could hold no memory of their suffering and so it was already passed. They were as they had been before the Kinslayer—wild energies arising from the intensity of growth and the richness of the forest, personified by aeons of passing creatures whose minds cast shapes among the fertile swirl of power and who remembered for them.

Seeing their happiness the young woman in the gown exhaled a long, satisfied sigh. She smiled the smile of a job well done and straightened her spine a notch. Then she turned and saw Kula and the smile became radiant, all delight, because it was looking at something beloved.

Kula hurtled into the waiting arms and the woman lifted her up and spun her around and around until her legs flew out and her broken sandal came off. She had never heard a voice, nor would, but she heard this person inside her as clearly as her own senses and knew her name, the name she had gone by when she grew up a Tzarkomen: Lysandra—a sound name. It didn’t have a signed form but Kula made one and they spoke briefly with their gestures, repeating until they understood the sign that meant each other’s name. Then Lysandra taught her to say her sound-name too. And she learned to say “Kula”. Lysandra had many memories of talking words though almost nothing else. She was glad to share her memories of talking words with Kula, though Kula preferred to sign. All this happened within the few moments of their embrace, as naturally as breathing.

At last Kula was set down to regain her balance. Lysandra took her hand and gestured at the hill to show what she had done. Kula nodded fit to make her head fall off. She had woken up Lysandra and Lysandra had made something good out of something awful and it was the best, the very best day.

Lysandra smiled again in pure contentment and Kula saw that her teeth were even, small and very sharp, like a cat’s. The irises of her eyes were brown at the edges but gold at the centers, and slitted, also like a cat. She had powerful features, bold and full in the way that Tzarkomen favoured in their notions of beauty. The daylight revealed her clothing to be a vast finery, trains of fabric dragging around in the ash and needles of the floor when they should have graced an occasion that was so fine Kula could not imagine where and what it could be. Just touching some of the panels of the dress gave the feeling that one was touching water, it was so soft. It rang with power and song that she could feel.

Kula gripped Lysandra’s hand, to see if any of the fire was somehow left there, but all she could feel was that it had quite gone, somewhere so far she could not reach it. It was not fire any more but its energy was there and Lysandra was bolstered by it, brighter, stronger. She wished her mother were there again and Lysandra looked down on her and squeezed her hand gently because she was that now. She had been nothing, but now she was that.

Kula’s stomach growled. The pangs of hunger and thirst returned suddenly. Lysandra straightened and sniffed the breeze like a scouting hound. After a moment she chose a direction and set off without a backward glance at the box or the cavorting Draeyads, her little girl’s hand in hers. Together they disappeared into the grey and green vaultings of the forest, although for a long time glints and gleams of fierce gems and gold embroidery could be glimpsed by anyone looking in the right direction.