The ruined building was roiling with smoke, flame, and screams when Kora stumbled out and into the full light of the sun.
The flames and the smoke were the death of the unnatural trees. The screams were the death of a woman.
Whether it was Alira or Whéuri, she did not know.
Most of the free prisoners had already disappeared into the jungle, taking their chances that they could scatter fast enough that at least some might survive the Bloodborn. But Kora could see that a handful, in their exhaustion and their terror, were going in the only direction they knew. They were running down the path itself, across the bridge over the river and then through the village of wooden houses on their wooden stilts.
They would be the first to die.
Already, Bloodborn were floating out of their doorways, only just beginning to realize what was happening.
Vayra, coughing smoke, came out of the hall. They two were the last of them. Except for Alira and Whéuri, somewhere deeper in the building.
The older woman saw the prisoners crossing the bridge. At a glance, she could tell there was no way to save them now. She and Kora would be lucky if they could save themselves. She pulled Kora’s good arm toward the jungle. “Let’s go!”
Kora rocked in place. “Alira,” she said. “What if—”
They both flinched as a Bloodborn woman in the village began to laugh in high and piercing glee. She was facing the prisoners limping across the bridge. She wove the air in front of her. A Stormborn man on the bridge was thrown backward. His head bounced on its stones. He did not move again.
“Now!” Vayra shouted, and she pulled Alira toward the jungle.
Alira took a step. Then another. The screaming was very loud, very close. Was it Whéuri? Mother, was it Alira?
What if she could help them?
Suddenly, the screaming in the building stopped.
Kora tried to call out Alira’s name, but she choked on the sound.
Vayra was pushing into the thinner part of the jungle where it met the front of the building. She was pulling Alira by the arm, and Alira’s feet were moving in stumbling steps, instinctively preventing her from falling forward to the ground.
The world dissolved into flashes.
The pain of branches whipping against her broken shoulder. The desperation on Vayra’s face each time she looked back. The screams that began again.
A crashing noise.
Vayra was pulling her down an embankment of rocks and vines. Kora stumbled beside her.
The river was streaming ahead of them, brown and white.
They should swim, Kora thought. But before she could speak the words, there was another sound of rushing water. Overhead.
She froze, looked up, saw a wooden chute above them belch a great heave of water out into the river.
Then the world exploded.
*
Trees. Glorious and tall as the clouds, with branches that opened out from wooden spires into a fullness of shimmering green that seemed to cover the sky.
Floating on her back—feet downstream, one arm folded around Alira’s chest—Kora saw the Furywood coming. A stand of mature, ancient trees, webbed with wooden walks strung between the branches, homes and shops and halls hung tightly to the great trunks of wood.
She hugged Alira up, making sure her face was still out of the water. “Almost there,” she whispered. “Almost home.”
Alira blinked and coughed weakly. Kora took it for a nod.
“Do you see it?” Vayra was floating behind. They’d been taking turns carrying the barely breathing huntress.
“I do!” Kora called back. She tried to kick against the stream, tried moving toward the slower currents nearer the bank. “I’ll need help.”
The older woman splashed from behind, grunting in the exhaustion they both felt. The trees grew larger. They’d be upon it soon.
Not long after the river had pushed them free of the village and its screams and laughter and flames—not long after they’d found Alira facedown in the water and saved her—she and Vayra had talked about floating past Anjel in silence, on the chance that the Bloodborn were still there. If they weren’t, if familiar faces still walked the hanging paths of Anjel, then they could come ashore and hike back.
But they knew soon enough that neither of them had the strength to walk more than a few feet. They’d come ashore beside the Furywoods of Anjel. They’d simply pray the Bloodborn were no longer there.
Vayra reached Kora as the river made its last turn above Anjel. The older woman wedged up alongside her, bumping her broken shoulder and making Kora glad that the cold of the water had left it numb.
They spat, splashed, and then had hold of each other, Alira between them as they struggled toward the shore.
There were boats there. And people. Stormborn. Kora called out, tried to wave, but then dunked under the current. She kicked, strained, managed to get her head up.
“Kora!” Vayra called out.
Kora pulled at the older woman, at Alira. She swallowed water and coughed it out, but her legs didn’t stop.
Her feet suddenly struck bottom. Rocks that were slick but solid. She pushed. She heaved.
And then there were shouts. There was splashing all around them. Hands—strong hands—had hold of her and were pulling her through the water. They tugged against her broken shoulder, but she was too spent to do anything more than moan. She felt her weight fall back into them, and she let whatever fight she had left drift away, past her feet, down the ever-flowing stream.
She was home.