“WHAT DID YOU DO with Kudiya?” My strong wind jolts me down to face Puru, the well basin behind me.
“That . . . wasn’t . . . Kudiya. . . .”
“Who was he? Where’s Kudiya?”
“Kudiya . . . is . . . attending . . . the birth.”
I look. There he is at a feast table in the brother village, feeding grapes to a laughing young woman. No broken leg. No bloody head. “Who was in the well?”
“A . . . vision. . . .”
“Did you create it?”
“No. . . . I . . . saw . . . it on its way. You flew into your destiny.”
I saved a life that wasn’t living. After the bees and the spiders, I should have guessed.
“But . . . the . . . earth . . . truly did heave.”
A pig dashes by, bleating its distress. The villagers are lucky to be away.
“Where is Kezi?”
“In . . . Wadir. . . .”
Dead! Only my strong wind keeps me erect. I command it to fly me to Enshi Rock, where I will begin my long sleep. My wind lifts me.
“Becoming . . . a . . . heroine. . . .”
I drop back down. She’s alive among the dead. I can’t see into Wadir. None of us can.
“And . . . you . . . are . . . a champion.”
Am I? I evaluate myself, searching for what’s altered. In all ways I feel the same, except . . . I go to a collapsed hut and crawl into the small opening that remains. The inside reeks of sheep cheese and sweat. I feel no fear. If Kezi were at my side, I could be happy here. I squirm out. I could be happy in a walnut shell—with Kezi. Now I can bring her to Enshi Rock.
I’ll go to her. “How did she reach Wadir?”
“The . . . tunnel . . . is . . . gone.”
“How will she leave?”
He tells me about plucking the feather and neither eating nor drinking. The task seems simple enough.
“She . . . seeks . . . Admat . . . there. If she stays long enough to sprout her own feathers, she cannot leave.”
I have to find her.
“If . . . you . . . help . . . her, she won’t become a heroine. If you enter the volcano, you will not be god of the winds.”
I know that. Entering the volcano means going underground.
“In . . . Wadir . . . you . . . will not be a god at all. You will be as mortal as Kezi. After a while you’ll grow feathers and become a warki. Then you’ll never leave.”