At last Kiva reached her father’s hut at the edge of the village. She ducked through the door and paused just inside, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness.
“Kiva!” Quint shouted from somewhere in the dark, and suddenly Kiva felt herself tackled in a hug, staggering back toward the door as her little sister’s arms squeezed tight around her waist.
Kiva laughed.
“Oof! You’re getting too big to run at me like that.”
Kiva ruffled the younger girl’s hair, planted a kiss on the crown of her head. Four seasons old when Kiva had her vision and left to live in the Sisters’ camp, Quint was eight now. Kiva didn’t have time to visit very often, and every time she did she felt a confusing surge of bitterness and love as she saw how much her sister had grown while she wasn’t looking.
“Quint,” came another voice from the other side of the hut, a woman’s. Kiva looked up.
It was Liana. She’d been at the Sisters’ meeting that evening, looking on from the side of the crowd. Seeing her face now, Kiva felt everything she’d been trying to forget flood back into her mind: the Strangers, the Forsaken, the Vagra, Kyne.
“Remember what we talked about?” Liana said to Quint. “You have to treat your sister with respect. Soon enough, she won’t just be your sister anymore. She’ll be the Vagra, in charge of the whole village.”
The pressure of Quint’s arms around Kiva’s waist eased. She let go of Kiva and stepped back. All the brightness had gone from the girl’s face. Now, she looked at Kiva with a trace of fear, as a child might look at a complete stranger. Kiva bit her lip.
“It’s fine,” Kiva said. “She’s not doing any harm. Really.”
There was a beat of silence. Grath knelt in the middle of the room over a pot set on some glowing embers; he watched Liana and Kiva but didn’t say anything.
“What brings you all the way to the edge of the village?” Liana asked at last. “Are you on business from the Vagra?”
Kiva shook her head. “No. Just visiting.”
Liana nodded. “Grath is making sweetroot stew. You’re welcome to some.”
“Thank you,” Kiva said. “Are you staying here tonight?”
“I am,” Liana said.
“You can stay too, if you want,” Grath said, rising from the fire and wiping his hands on a cloth. “We’ve kept your old bed the same.”
“No,” Liana said, looking first at Grath, then back at Kiva. “I’m sure she can’t stay.”
Kiva bristled, her body tightening. Liana probably thought Kiva was shirking her duty by coming here tonight—she should’ve been trying to summon the Ancestors to tell her more about the Strangers, not coming to the outskirts of the village for a visit.
“She’s right,” Kiva said, trying her best not to let her disappointment show in her voice. “I can’t stay. But thank you for the offer. A bowl of stew, then I’ll be on my way.”
Liana nodded and turned away, walked with Quint to the wall and sat on the ground. Grath turned back to the pot, threw the cloth over his shoulder and gave the stew another stir. And Kiva, in the silence, wandered away, back to the door.
She peered outside. The doorway pointed away from the village and toward the rise. Beyond was the plain. Kiva hadn’t set foot on it since the day of her first vision.
She sensed movement behind her and glanced backward to see Grath approach. Just behind her shoulder, he stopped.
“When you were a girl,” he began, his voice low so Liana and Quint couldn’t hear, “you used to love going out there to the plain. Do you remember? Every night at sundown, I’d look around and suddenly you’d be gone.”
“I remember,” Kiva said, looking out toward the horizon. She felt an ache in her chest.
“You know, the stew won’t be ready for a while,” Grath said.
Kiva looked back. Grath was smiling.
“Go,” Grath said. “The village will still be here when you get back.”
Kiva turned back to the door. The sky was streaked with color; if she hurried, she could get to the plain in time to see the Great Mother dip below the horizon. She smiled and gave Grath one more glance. Then she put her eyes forward and darted through the door to the foot of the hill, feeling as though she was fleeing, escaping.
Kiva ran up the rise as quickly as her legs would take her. The muscles in her thighs burned but she still felt lighter with each step, felt the cares of the village dropping off her one by one, until it seemed that when she reached the top of the rise she’d fly into the air and float away into the sky.
Coming down on the other side, Kiva’s heels jarred against the ground, digging into the dirt and sliding down the hill at each footfall. She was deliberately careless with her steps, allowing herself to wobble on her feet. A few times she grabbed at the prairie grass rising up around her for balance, but the stalks gave her no purchase and she tumbled harmlessly to the bottom of the hill.
As she sprang to her feet, Kiva felt herself laughing. So this was what it was like to be alone. She’d practically forgotten, after spending the past four seasons trapped in the center of the village amidst a cacophonous storm of thoughts and feelings coming at her from every angle. But here on the prairie there were no huts, no people, no thoughts grappling for space in her head. Here, the only thing that grabbed at her were the grasses that bent in the wind, grazing her calves as she passed into the plain. Here, Kiva could be free—for a little while at least.
Kiva came into the broad expanse of the plain. She hoisted her dress to her knees, the fabric pooling in her hands like sand, and dashed to the hillock that had been her favorite spot. She threw herself down and bent an elbow, casting her wrist across her forehead. Peering from beneath her thumb, she glanced at the soft glow of the Great Mother receding on the horizon and squinted until the blotch of red went blurry.
Kiva’s eyes shut, and she listened to the sound of silence in her head. She felt herself drifting, hovering on the edge of sleep.
And it was then, as Kiva balanced on the cusp between two worlds, between wakefulness and sleep, that another vision came over her.
The vision happened much as before. It began just as the Great Mother set, with a blinding pain that gripped Kiva at the base of her torso and shot up through her spine. Lying sideways, her body convulsed, her back and legs arched in a near-semicircle, before inverting and folding her over in the other direction, head to knees.
As before, Ao passed overhead just as the vision seized her, the moon’s gravity lifting Kiva’s hair into the air as if she were floating underwater. Kiva spread her arms and let them be pulled into Ao’s distant grip.
The burst of light and fire.
The stone bird winging its way between pinprick stars that elongated like raindrops in the wind.
The three dark figures standing silhouetted against the horizon—and one of them stepping forward into the light. His face became visible.
A boy. Skin pale, eyes blue.
“Who are you?” Kiva demanded. “What do you want? Why are you coming to Gle’ah?”
The boy said nothing.
Then the vision ended as Ao passed out of reach and dropped Kiva back to the ground, her hands splayed in the dirt.
As before, Kiva came gasping back to her senses with a word on her tongue. The first time, in the vision she’d had when she was thirteen, the word had been Strangers.
This time, the word was Matthew.
She spoke it aloud, setting her fingers lightly on her lips to feel them form the strange, foreign sounds. The boy’s name? Perhaps.
Kiva pushed herself to her feet and walked back to the village, her eyes on her feet. She reflected on what she’d seen.
The vision had been exactly the same as before, with only one difference: she had seen the boy—had seen Matthew—even as the other Strangers remained black silhouettes, shrouded by darkness. For some reason, the Ancestors wanted her to see his face, to know his name.
But why?