She did not have the corncob doll with her. That was with her clothes, inside the sweat lodge, waiting for her if she survived the exposure. But she knew that if she took refuge in a Vision, she could survive the cold as she had survived suffocation in a cave and three days on the Tor of the Stone Hedge surrounded by a thousand wild, dancing fae. She had faced worse things than hanging from a tree. She vowed to survive this ordeal.
They all expect me to wail for mercy, Dindi thought. They think I have no power. But I know something they don’t. I do have power. I do have magic. I might not be able to use it for anything other than Visions, but that’s all I need to survive this.
Mayara, you never gave up on your dream to regain your wings. I won’t give up either.
Solitude gnawed Mayara. She had no one now, no clan, no family, no pretend mother, no almost lover. She had a plan, of course. As soon as the ground thawed, she would go to the rocks above the cave to unbury her wings. Then she would take her journey. When spring arrived, however, she did not want to forego planting…not that she still intended to be in the Corn Hills come November harvest, but… just in case. What if something happened and she wasn’t able to make the journey? Don’t take chances.
So she worked through summer, then autumn. Every time she heard the call of migrating geese, forming white chevrons across crimson western skies, she renewed her promise to leave. As soon as the harvest is in, she promised herself, I’ll leave then. Ironically, it was a good year. She filled baskets full of food no one would ever eat. She would have no way to carry it, not if she flew. She stacked everything neatly against the hut in store jugs.
She finally made the journey to the cave where her family and her people had been murdered. Nature had swallowed their memory. Unlike the humans haunted by their guilt, Mayara encountered no lingering trace of Aelfae magic.
Trembling from urgency, she clawed at the dirt under the boulder where her Aelfae mother had buried her wings. The scabrous clay crumbled under her assault. Her first hint of success, feathers under her nails, pushed her into a frenzy of digging, until she had scooped out two wings.
They were not what she expected, remembered, or wanted.
Their condition, though ragged, half rotted, was not what bothered her. They looked like the wings on a bird after it had been dragged about the yard by a cat all morning. She’d anticipated that, she was certain she could heal them, even as she dreamed they would heal her.
More perplexing, they were diminutive; each wing was no larger than a hand. Of course, she realized. They hadn’t grown with her. How could they when she had never worn them? She had matured into an adult woman, but these were the wings of a child. They could never bear her weight.
Perhaps, she asked herself, perhaps this could be healed? But how? She had always focused on the day she would dig up her wings. Never had she considered the problems she might encounter once she had them. She knew no magic. It had been years since she had seen Aelfae dances, and she had been so young—she couldn’t remember the exact movements. She remembered the glorious freedom of flight, but she wasn’t sure she actually remembered how to fly. All she had practiced over the years had been how to hide.
Growls startled her from her despair. A pack of lean wolves surrounded her. Their fur bristled over gaunt ribcages. They were hungry.
“Don’t you know me?” she asked them. “I’m a friend. I’m a faery, not a human.”
The chief wolf leaped for her throat.
An arrow knocked the wolf out of the air. More arrows followed. The pack scattered, except the chief wolf, which had died instantly with an arrow through his eye.
Joslo stepped out from behind a boulder further up the hill.
Panic replaced gratitude. How much had he seen? Hastily, she shoved dirt over the wings. He strode down hill, toward her. By the time he stood over her, hand outstretched to help her to her feet, she had re-buried her past. She stood up without taking his hand.
“Your aim has improved,” she said.
“Since you spurned me, I’ve had nothing but time to practice.”
She could not help but feel sorry for the dead wolf. “You saved my life. What can I give you?”
He flashed the endearing, slightly crooked smile she remembered. “You know what I want from you, Mayara.”
She looked away. “You haven’t changed your mind?”
“Have the trees changed their mind about the sun?”
If she married him, it would be for all the wrong reasons. It would be from fear, not love. Marriage would be another place to hide. She would have to hide her true self from her husband, just as she had hidden herself from her adopted parents so many years. No other choices occurred to her, unfortunately. It was obvious she would never fly again. She had lost her chance to escape years ago. All she had left was a chance to survive—and she could not survive alone.
“I will marry you, Joslo.”
Delight filled his face. He scooped her up into his arms, tossed her in the air, then caught her, clasped her and kissed her.
“Don’t you dare change your mind again!” he warned her. “Once I have you, I’ll never let you go.”
Warmth. Steam. Log benches. Wood ceiling.
Jensi and Tibi rubbed her limbs and petted her hair. She cried. They kept repeating that she was safe, but she wasn’t crying over her numb fingers or chapped nose.
Cutting close to the edge of death had stripped Dindi of any illusions that she was free. She still loved him desperately, hopelessly, helplessly.
Kavio, oh Kavio.
How had she ever thought she loved Tamio? How had she forgotten what real love was, love that gutted your world like a knife and pulled out a bigger horizon than you could have imagined?
Tamio had been an obsession, but she did not love him, she had never loved him. Now she could not even recapture the giddiness she had felt at the idea of marrying him.
It was as if the cold had restored her clarity.
Or freed me from a hex.
Mercy.
When had her obsession about Tamio started? The morning after she had rebuffed him! Did that make sense? Only if he had decided not to take NO for an answer…
Oh, you bastard.
Another memory returned in a rush:
Kemla holds a coal burning in a jar.
“You’re cold and tired, Dindi,” Kemla says. There is a peculiar force to her voice that Dindi wants to resist but cannot. “You will take this jar back to the Den. You will set it on the floor. You will then go to sleep and remember nothing of this conversation. But when Tavaedies come to search your home tomorrow, and they find it, you will confess it is yours.”
She tries to fight the command by throwing the jar through the trapdoor into the storage room, but it shatters open and flames spill out…Surely that’s bad, but her mind is too fuzzy…
Dindi fights but her own mind spins in loops and soon she is in bed, cozy and warm, falling asleep, unable to remember something important…
That bitch.
She did it. She did this to me. She set me up.
I hate her.
“Leave me alone!” Dindi yelled at Jensi and Tibi.
“Dindi, we need to…”
“You will leave now!”
They hurried from the sweat lodge.
Dindi stared at the planks in the floor, fighting the hard, cold feeling that seemed to be swallowing her from inside out. If she closed her eyes, she remembered Kemla tugging her into this very room to be prettied and painted. She could still feel Kemla’s fingers in her hair. Oh, the serpent, pretending to be her friend. All along, Kemla had only had one goal: To stop Dindi from performing for the White Lady.
Some part of her must suspect the truth about me. Some part of her must know there’s something different about me and loathe me because of it.
Or fear me because of it.
And she should fear me.
The bite of the cold outside was nothing to the ice inside her.
She stood on the edge of the steam pit.
Dindi began to dance.
Her anger and pain burned into movement, while inside she lost herself in a whirlwind of vengeful fantasies. If Kemla would not share a stage with her, then let Kemla begone! Let her know hurt, know guilt, know shame and fear and agonizing pain! Let her suffer as Dindi had and sevenfold!
As always, she danced in a kind of trance that admitted no distraction. The fire salamanders awakened in their pit. The dragons keened and slithered up and down her body as she gyrated in the billowing steam.
Eventually she burned off the nervous energy and sank into a stupor in the corner of the sweat lodge. She dreaded the moment she would have to face the rest of the world again.
Dancing for the White Lady was out of the question now. If Abiono had been nervous about her role before, he certainly wouldn’t want her now that she was a criminal.
Tamio would have tired of his joke about marrying her.
Her clan and tribal kin would be ashamed of her.
The Green Woods tribesfolk would hate her for hurting one of their beloved Sylfae.
She was the Duck all over again.
Walking out of the sweat lodge, she felt like she had a boulder tied to her back, like Gremo used to have.
Finnadro waited for her. So did a large crowd of Green Woods tribesfolk. Her heart sank.
But the crowd parted silently. No one heckled her. Finnadro escorted her to the foot of one of the conifers.
“Your new home,” he said gravely.
“I’m surprised you trust me with another one.”
“I thought I understood what happened the night the fire started. Now I realize, I know nothing. For I have never seen the Sylfae do what they did for you. No one who has the favor of the Sylfae can be a true enemy of Green Woods, or of me.”
“They favor me?”
“You don’t remember?”
All she remembered was the Vision of Mayara and her lost dream.
“When you fainted from the cold, the Sylfae who held you lifted you further up into the branches of his arms. He and the trees on either side of him all reached to enclose you in a bower of their pine needles, to protect you from the wind and chill. When we saw that they would not let you be harmed, and that you seemed unable to ask for mercy, Nann decreed you be taken into the sweat lodge and revived. Only then would the Sylfae release you. Can you explain this?”
She rubbed her temples. A headache pulsed behind her eyes. “Not really.”
Finnadro gestured again. “Your new home.”
“Thank you.”
“Can you clarify something for me?” Finnadro asked.
“Yes?”
“Are you a Tavaedi? You practice with them, yet in your aura, I sense no Chromas. Perhaps I merely lack the colors you possess…?”
Dindi laughed, or maybe it was more of a sob.
Oh, Mayara. You still have not told me how to undo the curse you put on me. Was that your vengeance? You lost your dream, so you decreed that the children of my lineage would not be allowed to dream either?
“I’m just a serving girl for the Tavaedies,” she said.
“Then you won’t perform in the contest for the White Lady?”
“There would be no point.”
She climbed down the ladder into her new den. It was a bare dugout, full of dust and cobwebs. For some reason, it made Dindi think of Mayara’s child-sized wings, powdery with disuse.
Could it be that Dindi was seeing Visions of Mayara, not because the Aelfae had anything to do with the curse on her family, but because they were alike in an important way? Mayara had clung to her dream so long, she didn’t realize she’d outgrown it. Maybe it was time for Dindi to grow up too. Stop play-acting at Tavaedi. Accept the fact she would never win back Kavio.
Except…she had promised the faeries she would help the Aelfae. Ha. That was never going to happen either. Unfortunately, they still trusted her. Why else had the Sylfae tried to protect her? They had placed their faith in her even though she was destined to fail them.
A man cleared his throat.
Someone was waiting there, and it wasn’t Tibi.
He stood up from behind a support beam. Zavaedi Abiono wrung his hands. “Dindi. I know I have no right to ask this of you, but I need your help.”
Amdra found her father Vumo still in his tent, half drunk and half naked. She tossed him his quill-embroidered tunic.
“Don’t forget you must do your part,” she said.
He twisted his face like a baby in a tantrum. “Don’t make me do this.”
“I will not have to make you do it. You will do it out of loyalty to all Morvae.”
“Muck all Morvae.”
She pressed her hand to her forehead. “I’m not going to have this conversation with you. And I’m not going to use Compulsion on you either, because I know that’s what you want so you can play the martyr. You are not the martyr here, father.”
He picked up his bowl of beer.
Amdra dashed it from his hand.
He picked up the empty beer, and a jar.
She lifted the jar and smashed it against the pole holding up the tent. Then she called out to the warriors outside the tent.
“My father has made himself beer-sick again,” she told them. “He’s to have nothing whatever to drink as long as he is in our camp.”
They nodded. “Yes, mistress.”
“That was uncalled for,” said Vumo, acting hurt.
“If you want a drink, I suggest you crawl over to our enemy’s camp and ask to celebrate the Midwinter Rite with them. I’m sure Nann will be glad to fill your bowl.”
“I wish I had never sired you,” he spat. “I wish I had drowned you at birth.”
“Maybe if you had bothered to father me as well as sire me, you would have less complaints about my conduct.”
“You’re just like your mother.”
Amdra’s lip curled. “You do one thing well, father, and only one thing. So I suggest you make yourself useful and go do it.”
“And when I’m done with this. Will he release me?” whimpered Vumo.
“You’ve known him longer than I have. What do you think?”
He began to cry. “I need a beer.”
“You know where to find it.”
Vumo stood up. He staggered out of the tent. The warriors outside the door looked inquiringly at Amadra.
“My father needs transport to the gates of the Winter Warrens,” she said. “He’s feeling festive.”
“Yes, mistress.”
Back at her own aerie, Amdra paced the octagonal wooden platform. Hawk knelt nearby, leashed to a post. She took off his blindfold, not so that he could see, but so that she could admire the golden flecks in his malt eyes. He was so handsome, her hawk.
“Am I beautiful?” she asked him.
She flicked her tongue and tasted his aura. As always, she felt the sharp tang of a struggle there. Tangled furious thoughts roiled deep inside his being, silenced shouts of hate. She smoothed those threads into an orderly pattern of desire.
“You are the most beautiful woman in the world,” he said.
She had taken other lovers before Hawk. They all started the same way, a knotted mess of hate and resentment and fear. She tamed them and trained them and smoothed their thoughts into neat rows and boxes. Then, when the last glimmer of resistance died out in their minds, she threw them away. She hunted the mountains until she found a new wilding to break.
Hawk still had kick left in him. But he resisted less and less each time. It seemed to her that each of her slaves lasted a shorter time than the one before. She was becoming too good at breaking them. She knew she needed to slow down, not intrude in their minds so often. No more than once or twice a moon was needed to keep them captive once they were past the initial induction period. But she craved more frequent contests. She had been fighting Hawk daily ever since they’d come to this accursed woods.
“We’re going to die, Hawk,” she said. “We don’t have enough warriors, riders or raptors. He promised me reinforcements, but where are they? He has decided to sacrifice us, I think.”
“Run away, mistress,” he whispered. “Run away from it all.”
She touched his mouth, amazed. So seldom did he volunteer any original advice anymore. He had been full of opinions at one time. Immediately after his capture. Of course, they had mostly been useless, as this bit of advice was useless, but she was touched nonetheless.
She reached out to him, and he flinched. He thought she was going to pluck the thought away, hurting him.
“I just want to touch your face,” she said.
His eyes widened. She had surprised him. Sometimes they could be gentle with one another and it always surprised them both.
“Mistress,” warned Hawk.
She felt the wind at her back of a Raptor landing. No one but the Great One would have dared use her personal landing platform, so she already knew who she would see when she turned around.
He was there, on his eagle. But behind him, landing on the ground around her tree, were a dozen more Raptors and Riders.
“I told you to expect reinforcements,” he said.
She wanted to clap her hands like a little girl. Instead, she saluted the Great One, and touched Hawk’s shoulder.
“We’re not going to die, Hawk,” she said. “We’re going to raze that dog den to the ground!”
The Midwinter Rites.
Everyone from the oldest gramps to the newest baby gathered in the Great Lodge. In the place of honor directly in front of the platform, in a booth with actual benches, sat the Green Woods War Chief Nann, Finnadro, and the White Lady.
Never before a dance had Dindi felt such an overwhelming desire to vomit.
Kemla's injury had been kept a secret. In a concealing Orange mask and mantle, Dindi's face was hidden. Her arms and legs were painted in complex henna patterns, just like Kemla; her hair was dyed ginger, just like Kemla. Dindi and Kemla were of an age and size, so Abiono was hoping no one would notice the switch.
We’ll be twins. Kemla had predicted better than she knew.
Abiono had Kemla stashed away for the duration. Apparently, while Dindi had been recovering from her ordeal in the sweat lodge, Kemla had fallen down the ladder into her home and broken her leg. Abiono planned to bring her out in a few days and announce that she had injured her leg the day after the festival. The other Tavaedies, especially the young women, had kissed Dindi and wept their thank-yous into her shoulder; if there had been no one to take Kemla’s place, no one in the troop could have performed in the contest.
Dindi had never danced for an audience before. She’d laid out props, she’d danced with the fae, but to perform a real part in a real tama?
She was beginning to wish that she had broken her leg instead of Kemla.
Surely it couldn't feel worse than this dread like liquid fire that sapped her strength and made her feel her limbs were turned into corn mush? Following tradition, the Tavaedies walked single file through the crowd up onto the platform. As the star dancer, Dindi was required to lead them. She feared she'd forgotten how to walk, but somehow she made it, though she dropped her stomach somewhere along the way. Her whole insides were empty by the time the Tavaedis assumed their initial positions. Why, oh, why did she feel this way? How was she going to dance in this state?
Dindi knelt in the center of the stone platform, curled up in a ball inside a tight circle of Blue Tavaedis. A circle of Greens surrounded the Blues. The Yellows started to beat their drums, and the Pattern began to unfold.
All the nervous heat that had been tormenting her before now turned into a delicious bonfire of pure energy. Ah, so that was what that prickly feeling was for—when the time was right, it transformed into power. During practice, she had never been able to tap the same degree of passion that she found when she danced from pure joy or anger with the fae. But she found that passion now, though her mind was clear and her heart open.
And though her steps were precise and perfect in the Pattern, she felt as free as if she were dancing with the fae. She was dancing Orange, so she envisioned Orange, sheer Orange. She imagined she could see it smearing through the air in the aftermath of her movements, as if she were a living paintbrush on the mural of the universe. She could actually see the ribbon of color she painted, weaving in and out of the bands of color that the other Tavaedis made with their bodies, until the Pattern they were dancing was truly a pattern as clearly as in the warp and woof of a tapestry.
Tamio's strong hands grasped her waist. As he swirled her in the air, she could see her tangerine after-trail twist around and around with his emerald after-trail in a vast spiral.
She smiled at him, though he could not see her through the mask. As Orange and Green, their duet together formed the last steps of the Pattern. All too soon it was over. As Dindi's heart thumped hard with exertion and exhilaration in her chest, she secretly wished they could dance the Pattern over and over again for the rest of eternity, just to keep the moment from ending.
The White Lady stood up.
She began, “I am pleased to announce—”
Before she could finish her speech, the roof of the Great Lodge exploded.
Explosions of orange light blinded her. She heard wings whistle overhead, and caws. Smoke billowed up from the roof of the Great Lodge. Ash rained down on her, and blackened splinters. She instinctively spread her wings to shield herself from the debris.
She flapped her wings to clear off the dust and flew up through the burning hole in the roof. Sparks stung her as she passed the flames, but then she emerged into the air over the marae.
The panicked crowd stampeded out of the burning lodge. Outside offered the humans no more safety than inside. Raptors dived toward the tribehold. The Sylfae thrashed as if the trees were caught in the throes of a storm. The reach of the trees covered the whole marae and prevented the birds from entering. One Raptor tried. A hand-like branch snatched the intruder out of the sky and hurled bird and rider to the ground with such forced that both died.
But the Raptors found a breach in the wall in the gap where the burnt tree had once stood tall. Now she sagged, droopy black, against her neighbor. Her brittle arms could not fend off the birds.
Vessia launched herself into the breach and began to dance on crystal wings. She darted to and fro, like a dragonfly. In her wake, she wove six threads of light. With these she wove a rainbow net, like a loose basket, to cover the entire tribehold. The Raptors shrieked anger. They tried to fly toward the white weave, but could not break in.
“Friends, for now we are safe!” she cried to the milling crowd. “But this shield will not last more than a handful of days. We must put out these flames and repair the damage. Then, with your War Chief’s permission, I need all the Tavaedies and elders to meet with me in the kiva to perform the war dance!”
War Chief Nann herself tapped Dindi on the shoulder. “Kemla of Full Basket! The White Lady would like to you join us in the kiva. At once.”
Dindi still had on her mask. They still thought she was Kemla. She could only nod dumbly.
If she joined the war council with the White Lady, she would need to remove her mask. The deception would be uncovered. But War Chief Nann would not take no for an answer.
“I will be there as soon as possible, but right now I am urgently needed to…to…”
Dindi saw Tamio across the marae, shouting something about his horse Clipclop.
“…Rescue our horses and aurochsen!” she concluded. It was a perfect excuse. She had to switch back with Kemla before anyone found out what she had done. Abiono had told her that Kemla was hiding in the kraal.
“Impossible,” said Nann. “The kraal is outside the shield woven by the White Lady. There is no way to get to them without lowering the entire shield.”
“But that means…”
That meant Kemla was trapped outside the tribehold, at the mercy of the enemy. And Dindi had a terrible feeling it was all her fault.
Lame leg, downhill from her kin, with winged enemies circling overhead. An impossible situation. Unless she could grow a new leg, Kemla had no chance to warn her people.
Grow a new leg… Kemla stumbled out of the hut and stared into the kraal where more than twenty tamed horses padded around the slushy circle. A few wooden hoops were hung on some of posts of the log fence around the kraal.
If Tamio can do it, how hard can it be?
Of course, Tamio danced Purple, so he could see the vassily, the spirit of a horse. Kemla hopped over to the fence. She examined the hoops there, dismissing several bland wood rings. She selected one that had been beaded and painted.
“Blaze! Smokeytoes! Sootsy!” Kemla cried to the three Red fae, fire sprites, whom she knew best. They leaped out of the smoldering ruins of the burned half of the shack as though they had been awaiting her summons all along.
“You’re going to help me catch a horse,” Kemla told the three sprites. “Make the horse fear fire on three sides, driving it to me. Then, once I’m on it, drive it up the hill.”
The Red fire sprites chortled with wicked delight. “Can we set their tails on fire?”
“Just do as I tell you or I’ll set your tails on fire.”
“Which horse do you want, Kemla?” asked Smokeytoes.
“Which do you think?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “The best one.”
Kemla’s plan worked too well. The fae frightened a sleek dappled mare in Kemla’s direction. As soon as it took off, all the other horses started to run too. The whole herd came galloping straight at Kemla.
She gripped the hoop in her hands, trying to remember what she had seen Tamio do with it. Ignoring the pain in her bad leg, she used a dancer’s move to vault onto the back of the dappled mare as it tried to run past her. She dropped the hoop over the neck of the horse and yanked.
Big mistake. The horse bucked, nearly tossing Kemla off its back.
“You’re choking it! You’re choking it!” Smokeytoes shouted at Kemla.
“Tell the vassily you will set the horse on fire unless it submits to me!” Kemla screamed. She clenched her thighs, but stopped yanking on the wooden hoop. The horse began to run again. In conceiving this plan, Kemla had held a vague notion that she would be able to control the horse with the hoop, as Tamio did. Not at all. The horse was a brutal earthquake of rippling fur underneath her, to which she clung with one goal only, to keep her seat.
Fortunately, her horse, and the rest of the small herd, stampeded up the hill, toward the market square. All was going as well as could be expected, until suddenly, at the point where the hill crested onto a flat tabletop, the horses all turned away as one and began to run parallel to the crest of the hill.
“What are you doing?” Kemla didn’t know if she addressed the fire sprites who were supposed to be helping her, or the invisible vassilies, or the stupid beasts themselves.
“Something’s blocking us,” Smokeytoes answered, flickering like a spark on the wind beside Kemla. “We can’t get in, Kemla!”
Before Kemla could make up her mind what to do about the barrier, a new problem came nipping at their heels. Literally.
Three Raptors flew behind them, gaining fast.
“Vassily!” Kemla cried to the invisible spirit of her horse. “Enter into this beast now and lend it all your speed, or we will both die!”
The dappled mare bunched and smoothed beneath her with redoubled swiftness. Though Kemla could not see the horse glow, she knew that the vassily had possessed the horse fully. They began to pull ahead of the Raptors again.
Then the mare lurched and Kemla almost toppled.
Three more Raptors had circled the hill from the other side. Kemla and the panicked horses now found themselves trapped between two contingents of the enemy.
Dindi ran before the War Chief could stop her. She darted through the tunnel under the root, and found she could access a fringe of land before she hit something hard. She rubbed her forehead.
The sky was still dead white. She knew this to be the rainbow shield that the White Lady had established to keep out the Raptors.
She touched the shield, which, for something that was supposed to be invisible, shone immensely bright. Not only that, but when she examined it closely, she could see that it was not solid like stone, but woven, like cloth. The threads were hundreds of strands of different tinted light, and she could pick out each of the six colors. Yatus, who rode flies, could dart between the weave, as could a few other kinds of miniature fae, such as willawisps, ice wisps, and ant-riding abatwos. Nothing larger than a mouse’s tooth could pass the barrier.
She heard the thunder of hoofs. Two dozen horses raced around the far curve of the shield. Kemla rode upon the lead beast. Raptors chased the horses. Then, from the other side of the hill, another trio of Raptors swooped in, trapping Kemla and the horses in the middle, up against the shield.
Time slowed down. Everything around her moved in slow motion. Her whole world narrowed to the threads of the shield.
Could Dindi open it? One way would be to rip a tear in the fabric. But even if she could ‘sew’ it back together again, she somehow knew it would be weaker after that. The enemy might be able to tear open the seam.
There was another possibility. On loosely knit cloth, one could wriggle aside the threads without breaking them, making a hole that did not rip the pattern but only pushed it aside. Were the shield woven of real yarn, of course it would have been impossible to wriggle aside the threads far enough to make such a large hole without breaking them. But these ‘threads’ were made of light and infinitely flexible.
Dindi knew what she had to do, but not how to do it.
Stop thinking about it! she ordered herself sternly. If what you suspect is true, then you've done magic before, without thinking. That's what you need to do now.
She could see how waves of color undulated out of her movements and streaked towards the colors in the shields. She tried repeating those steps consciously, to repeat the effect, but that only started to tangle the threads. She shut her eyes to keep from distracting herself with her own work. In the end, pure intuition guided her steps and brought her to a rest. She opened her eyes. The hole in the shield was not large, but it would be big enough for one horse at a time to cross to this side. Dindi slumped in exhaustion. She felt like a pitcher that had poured itself empty.
The unfolding of this revelation seemed to take forever, but in fact, mere seconds had passed.
The horses poured through the opening, beginning with the horse that bore Kemla. When the last horse came through, Dindi realized she had only completed half her job. Now she must close the shield again before the faery beasts arrived. A part of her ached to simply let them come and slay her rather than force her leaden limbs to dance again. If only she weren’t so tired…
Across the field, watching her, she saw the man in black, seated on the back of a giant raven.
She had seen such a man before, in Yellow Bear. Deathsworn. The Deathsworn were human vultures. They gravitated toward disease, disaster and discord, knowing death would follow. It was a bad omen, but not so strange to see one here. The Deathsworn would not interfere in the dispute, only wait to collect the corpses.
And yet, she feared this man in black.
Dindi remembered a nightmare she’d had the night her clanhold was attacked: A snowy field, flashes of green and orange, a man on a black horse sweeping her away into unfathomable darkness. Dread of that darkness galvanized her as mere monsters had not been able to do. She began to dance again.
Umbral watched the maiden stand before the tapestry of a thousand colors and weave them flawlessly. Nothing could hide this spell. Not when she unwove the weave of the Last Aelfae herself as if it were a child’s first basket. She had to be one. He needed only one more test.
In his delight, however, he had grown careless. There had been no doubt that she had seen him, and known he was Deathsworn. He remedied that. He cloaked himself in darkness and urged Shadow toward the gap in the shield before she closed it. The next time she saw him, he would wear the Mask of the Obsidian Mirror, gain her trust, and she would deliver her secret into his hands.
Dindi tightened the weave on the shield until the hole re-sealed. If she had dragged cords of stone across the sky, she could not have been more wearied by the work. Raptors arrived moments too late. They pounded on the shield, faces twisted with fury and confusion. Their screams dimmed in her ears, her vision blurred, and she sank to her knees in cold slush. Both shield and fae seemed to fade from her sight. Everything grayed. The man in black, however, she could still see, across the field. He executed an ironic salute to her, then flew away on his raven.
Quixotic disappointment mingled with her relief. She drew a draught of icy air to bolster her strength enough to regain her feet.
Kemla roundly cursed the horse who had just dropped her. The horse tossed its head in haughty disregard.
“Why, you stupid, ungrateful beast—” Kemla shook a rider’s hoop at the horse. The mare skipped away to join the rest of the horses, further down the field.
“Kemla! Are you all right?” Dindi's query died out as it left her lips. Kemla’s appearance mocked the question. Cold discoloured her skin. Her long hair had been damped by sweat-melted snow, and now clumped with ice crystals and blue ice wisp fae. Her clothes smelled of smoke. She sat on her rump in the snow, clutching at her bad leg in agony.
“Dindi! You have to warn the clans. The Raptors—”
“We know.”
“You know?” Kemla echoed. Her voice rose an octave. “You mean I went through all that for nothing? You already knew?”
“Not for nothing. They’re going to need you for the War Dance.”
Dindi tried to dispel the ice wisps with a gesture, but the fae ignored her. She realized that even the ice wisps had become fuzzy and faint to her. Dindi had only lost sight of the fae once before. Just what had she done to herself with that dance?
But she could not rest yet. She struggled to hold on.
“Are you blind, you fool?” Kemla demanded. “I can’t dance. My leg is broken.”
“It’s not broken,” Dindi said. “It’s just hexed.”
By concentrating, she could see a tangle of bands of colored light wrapped around Kemla’s brilliant red, orange and gold aura, especially around her leg, where two clashing shades of crimson and orange twisted around and gnashed at one another like dueling snakes. The distant tail of one of the snakes slithered out of Dindi’s own aura. Dindi released the serpent coils of magic.
Kemla stood up; she jumped up and down.
“I am cured!”
“You were never injured. The pain was in your head. It was a hex.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I’m the one who hexed you.”
Water on the point of a boil shimmered and warped just before the bubbles formed. Kemla’s face trembled and warped in the same way before her fury boiled over and she launched an attack.
“I will kill you! I will kill you!” screeched Kemla.
Dindi staggered at the grey edge of exhaustion. She did not even try to defend herself. Kemla punched her across the face and Dindi collapsed in the snow like a ragdoll. Kemla might have made good her vow to kill her, had a man not tackled Kemla at just that moment.
It was Tamio.
Kemla squirmed in his arms. But Tamio laughed in delight.
“Good for you, Dindi, for putting that silly, vain, self-centered toad in her place. What a delicious prank! You should have come to me! I would have lent you a hand! Is that why you hid your magic before? Were you planning this all along?”
“Let me go, you worm!” Kemla fumed.
“Not until you promise not to harm my betrothed.”
“You two deserve each other!”
“We were destined for each other,” Tamio said smugly. He released Kemla, who withdrew from them both several steps.
Dindi lifted herself painfully from the ground.
“Tamio, the truth is, I didn't do it as a prank. I didn't do it on purpose at all. I didn't know I had magic, so I didn't realize I could hex anybody. I just thought how nice it would be if she hurt her leg a little, and at the time, I was dancing…and I guess that made magic… Then, just like that…”
Dindi trailed off as a terrible, terrible thought occurred to her. Just like that… Tamio had proposed to her with the same inexplicable suddenness. He had come courting her the day after Jensi's wedding, when she had danced, dreaming of just such a miracle… Oh, mercy.
She stared at him, searching for the patterns of magic. She could see them, bright emerald strands, harnessing his aura like hoops around the neck of a horse. The jade strands led…to her own aura, where they originated. There was no doubt about that. It wasn't entirely self-evident where the hex left off and his natural aura began, because his aura had begun to grow over the spell, like ivy over an old wall. Purple was trying to fight back, eating away at the alien Green. In time, he might even have cast off the hex on his own. Or it would have become so much a part of him that it would have been inextricable. She pushed away the temptation laden in that last thought.
“What's wrong?” he asked her. “Why are you looking at me like that? Dindi, aren't you happy to find out you have real magic?”
“No!” She shuddered. He stared at her, uncomprehendingly. She had to tell him the truth, but she knew how he would react. Her last ally would be gone. “Tamio, there's more. You aren't going to like it. Kemla was not the only one I hexed without knowing it.”
“Ooh, who else?” he asked eagerly. Until her level stare made him pale. “Not me!”
“Yes.” She flushed with shame.
“That's absurd!” He laughed, but he sounded uneasy.
“Then it won't hurt if I try to undo it. Stand still. Watch me as I dance and you should be able to see streams of color as I unravel the spell.”
Dindi began to dance around him, skips and claps, focusing on the alien Green strands entangled with his aura. Just as a gardener would weed a garden, she picked them out and tossed them aside with her movements. Tamio's eyes widened.
“Dindi… Dindi… I can see what you're doing…”
“Then you know why I have to do it.”
“Dindi, I can feel my love for you draining away!” he whimpered. “It hurts! Stop it!”
“Tamio, it's a spell! It's not what you really feel!”
He began to weep, piteously, and Dindi nearly stopped. However, she could see that it was the hex making him act so, as it fought her for its life like a living thing. The hex did not want to free its victim. It didn't want to die. But she killed it as ruthlessly as she would have killed the disease that rotted the corn. When she had eradicated it, she stopped. If only she weren’t so exhausted, she wouldn’t have made such a mess of all this. She could have undone the spells some gentler way….
Tamio fell to his knees in the frozen mud, sobbing. Dindi bit her lip.
She reached out to touch his shoulder, to comfort him. He jerked away.
“Don't touch me!” he growled. He jumped to his feet. He was past tears now. His face twisted with rage. “You did that to me! You pretended to be without magic so none of us would be on guard against you and then you used your magic like a witch to seduce me. You tricked me into asking to marry you. You are a thousand times worse than Kemla! At least she just orders people around openly. You force them to do what you want with secret spells and hexes!”
“Tamio. For what it's worth, I’m sorry.”
“It's not worth anything! Before you hexed me, I didn't hate you, Dindi. I didn't really care about you one way or the other. But I hate you now!”
“You'll tell them what I did, of course,” she said, resigned.
“Are you crazy?” Tamio spat. “I'm not going to tell anybody. It would make me a laughing stock!”
“Oh, no, she won’t get away with her machinations that easily!” said Kemla. “You may be too much of a coward to turn her in, Tamio, but I shall denounce her as a hexer before everyone! I hope they feed her alive to rabid wolves!”
“Really, Kemla?” Dindi asked coldly. “And at my trial, what will you do when I explain that you were the one who gave me the jar containing the Malfae—and hexed me so I took it home with me, unable to tell anyone about it or even remember what you did?
“And what about you, Tamio?” Dindi jabbed her finger at his chest. “You never intended to marry me until I placed a love spell on you, so I can only guess what it was you wanted from me when you placed a love spell on me!”
“You had to use a love spell, Tamio?” Kemla asked. “You boasted to me you could seduce her with nothing but the charm packed into one pinkie.”
“You gave her the fire, Kemla?” Tamio asked slowly. “It was one thing for you to convince me to seduce her. At least all I wanted was a tumble on the mats. You turned traitor to further your own personal vendetta.”
“Shut up, Tamio,” Kemla said.
Dindi took a step backward as if from a foul stench.
“You mean both of you were in on this together from the start? Scheming against me and hexing me?”
“There weren’t supposed to be any hexes, not at first,” Tamio protested. He looked shamefaced. “Things just got out of hand.”
“For all of us, apparently,” Dindi said dryly.
“What a mess.” He kicked the dirt. “We all went too far. But Kemla, you crossed the line.”
“Where did you get a jar with a captive Malfae anyway?” Dindi asked.
Kemla struggled to capture an answer. “I …don’t …know.”
“You don’t know?” Dindi repeated. “I didn’t know either, when Finnadro asked me….Kemla, let me look at your aura again.”
“Stay away from me!”
“Let her look, Kemla,” Tamio said. “I have a feeling this is bigger than just the three of us. No matter what our differences, we must defend our tribe. This is war.”
Umbral had already seen the Orange hex in Kemla’s aura. Amdra had not bothered to bury the spell deeply. The girl found the alien thorns, and removed them, yet the trio still argued over what it meant. Dindi wanted to tell the War Chief about the hex, but the others talked her out of it, arguing they could not be sure.
Umbral waited impatiently.
Finally, they decided to go back but keep silent.
“Dindi,” he whispered. He pitched the name so only she would hear. He wore the Obsidian Mirror now. She would hear a familiar voice. “Let the others go ahead.”
“I will… catch up with you,” Dindi said.
The other two walked away, leaving her alone with him.
Umbral stepped out of the shadow of invisibility into Dindi’s view.
But who did she imagine he was? When she looked into the obsidian mirror whom did she see?
He stopped just a hand’s reach from her. He could have reached out and stroked her hair if he had wanted. A shudder rippled through her. He could not tell if it was joy, or pain, or fear, or rage. Tears streamed down her cheeks from nothing as simple as one feeling, wrenched free from the unfathomable storm inside her.
“I knew you would come!” she said.
Sure you did. Good girl. He nodded. Name me, please.
He was gaunter and crueler than the year Dindi had known him. His svelte yet powerful build, the epitome of a warrior and a Zavaedi, had not changed, save there was a harder definition to his muscles, as if he had become even more relentless with himself. His body had been knapped with the symmetry found in the finest of obsidian blades. Blade-like, too, was his scrutiny, as though he would slash what he saw to pieces and reassemble it according to some preferred plan of his own. Despite his honed body, there was about him a desolation, an emptiness. He wore all black, tunic and legwals.
She could not believe he stood in front of her.
Kavio. Her aura sang his name.
“Were you watching the contest?” she asked him. “Is that why you’re here? To find the Vaedi?”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “Yes.”
“Did you know it was me in Kemla’s place?”
Now his brow flicked up. “Really?”
“Kavio, there’s something I must tell you. Something I should have told you a year ago. I don’t expect it will change anything…between us. But it may make a difference to you for other reasons.”
“Tell me then.”
“It’s easier if I show you.” She reached into her blouse to touch the corncob doll—a comforting habit rather than a necessity—and took his hand in hers so he would share the Vision.
Mayara labored alone in the smoky hut. Joslo had done his best to arrange the soft wolf pelt under her back, but now he was out again, in search of kindling. Normally, female relatives would have been by her side, but she had none. Alone, she shouted at the dark walls of the ugly hut, her prison. When the baby finally came, Mayara had to bite the umbilical cord with her own teeth.
Exhausted by her hours of labor, Mayara lay back on the wolf fur, nuzzling the newborn at her breast. A little girl meant continuity for their new one-family clan. If she survives, Mayara reminded herself. The infant seemed misshapen; some weird growth sprouted from her spine.
Then the baby yawned and the lump on her back unfurled into two tiny wings. The baby began to glow with a rainbow aura of light, brilliant as a miniature sun.
Mercy! My Aelfae blood bred true! Mayara fought her panic. What should she do? What would Joslo do if he came home and found he had sired a winged daughter? He must never know.
She wrapped up her newborn into a basket on her back, with the wolf wrap to keep the baby snug and hide her wings. Mayara hiked to the same hill where her own mother had once buried her wings. There, just as her Aelfae mother had once done for her, Mayara danced until her daughter’s wings fell away—the baby’s wail nearly broke Mayara’s heart—and then Mayara danced again around the wings themselves. Though she remembered no other magic, she remembered her mother’s spell of hiding, and she even knew, from bitter years of experience, how to expand and strengthen it.
She closed her eyes and chanted as she danced: “Child of mine, and child of my child, and child of hers! You will never fly, you will never hold you head up high, or look your enemy in the eye. Keep your head down and your heart bound, and always keep your feet on the ground. For she who would fly must some day fall, and she who risks all to soar must some day die.”
Bands of light, in all colors, lashed out and smacked the fallen wings, which turned to stone. This spell would protect not just one generation, but all future generations. No one would ever be able to see the magic flowing through her daughter’s lineage.
When she returned to the homestead, Joslo had already returned and started to stack the new wood by the side of the house.
“Did you bury it?” he asked.
“What?” She turned still as stone.
“The afterbirth. I assumed you left to bury it.”
“Yes.” She relaxed. “Yes, I buried that. Behold—we have a daughter.”
Joslo set aside his ax to admire the scrunchy-faced girl. He pulled a feather from her downy baby curls. “A swan feather. Where did this come from?”
“A swan.” Mayara shrugged, as if this were of no import or interest.
“But it’s not time for their migration.” He laughed. “It must have lost its way from the rest of the flock. Not unlike us. I think it’s an omen for our clan. The question is, a good or bad omen? Was the swan dead or alive?”
“Alive, very much so,” answered Mayara. “Maybe it lost the rest of its flock. It might never fly again, but I think it will survive.”
“A good portent then,” said Joslo. “We should take this omen for the name of our new clan. Lost Swan Clan.”
Mayara kissed her daughter’s head. “Yes. It’s a good name.”
She released his hand. Umbral fought the urge to hold on.
“You are Mayara’s descendent. You have Aelfae blood.”
“Yes,” Dindi said. “I began to suspect after I saw the Visions of Mayara, but before that, I had no idea. It is never talked about in my clan.”
“Aelfae blood alone does not guarantee you have six Chromas.”
“I know,” she said. “But I do.”
“I believe you,” he said.
She had been right before his eyes. The serving maid of the Tavaedies: a Tavaedi yet not a Tavaedi. It was her spell, he realized which had forced the wolfling to change shape at the wedding. Umbral had even recognized her well enough to unwittingly send Shadow to defend her. She had danced right in front of him, in fact, in front of an entire room of people, and still they had discovered nothing. Nothing!
“Thank you. For believing me. I wasn’t sure even you would be able to see through Mayara’s spell.”
“The Vision was quite convincing,” he said dryly.
A spell protected her from all the world, most especially from the Deathsworn who were the sworn enemies of the Aelfae. In her innocence, fooled into thinking he was the man she loved, she had revealed her secret to the man sent by Obsidian Mountain to hunt her.
Umbral did not often laugh, but the irony was too rich. For the first time since he had embraced the darkness, he laughed deep from his belly until he was breathless.
She laughed too. Then suddenly, she hugged him. “I have missed you so much, Kavio!”
He staggered back a step.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away. “I should not have done that. We are not…we will never. I only wanted you to know the truth about me.”
“Now I know.”
He should kill her here and now.
No. Stick to the plan. He felt as if he were suffocating. He needed to get away. He needed to think.
“Tell no one you saw me,” he commanded.
Of all the men she had to see when she looked at him, why did it have to be Kavio?