The next morning, Isika was up and running the moment her eyes opened. She pulled her riding clothes on, laced up her soft travel boots, and stalked through the barely lit kitchen, bumping into Auntie on her way to the door. Auntie grasped her by the arms and held her out, searching Isika’s face with her eyes. Isika looked back, despite the hard lump of pain near her heart that told her to run.
“I love you, my gift,” Auntie said finally. “Every day, I thank the Shaper that you four beautiful children came to us.”
Her words were the last thing Isika had expected to hear. She often felt that they had only brought trouble to Teru and Dawit, who were too fragile to bear all the trouble.
“Oh, Auntie. I love you, too. I—I don’t know what to do. I feel crazy, as though I’ve never known my real self.”
“You’ll know. The Shaper will guide you,” Auntie said, though there was a furrow in her brow that gave her worry away. “Just promise me you’re not about to do anything stupid,” she said.
“It depends on what you think is stupid,” Isika whispered with a smile that collapsed on itself. “But I’m not going anywhere really. I just need to go for a ride.”
“That sounds like the right thing,” Auntie said. “See? What did I tell you? You’ll know what to do.” And then she pulled her into a hug. Isika let herself rest there for a minute, smelling Auntie’s lemon oil smell, then kissed her on her cheek and left the house and the smell of good food, the beautiful white earth walls, the flowers. It wasn’t time for comfort. Isika needed to reckon with herself.
She ran down to the horse barn and found it charred and empty after the evacuation. She reached for Wind with her mind, throwing her inner voice as far as she could.
Wind! Wind, I need you!
Wind! Come to me!
After a moment she heard his voice, faint and reedy, as though from far away.
I am coming!
As she waited, there was a rush of wings, and Keethior was there. Then hoofbeats echoing over the earth, and Wind rode down the hill, with four other horses.
They wanted to come, he said, pulling up in front of Isika and pawing the ground. I couldn’t stop them.
Isika reached out to the other horses and offered thanks. They shook their manes in a wind that still reeked of poison. Their eyes were wild, and she reached out to offer calm, until each horse was settled again. She didn’t bother with a saddle, using the fence to clamber onto Wind’s back.
Go, she told him, and he went. They flew over their normal path along the meadow, but it was black and devoid of feeling or life. The horses didn’t like to run on it. Isika felt their fear, so she sent them waves of comfort, and Keethior called overhead as the five of them ran.
If they ran fast enough, Isika thought, they could outrun the shame she felt, at being the daughter of a monster.
No, Keethior told her, and she jumped, looking up. Keethior was rising and diving, rising and diving in the air.
I didn’t realize I was thinking that so you could hear me, Isika said.
When you’re like this, your thoughts are so loud there is no way I can’t listen, he told her. But young one, whose daughter are you? Think hard.
She thought of the horrible man, his voice. She thought of Nirloth. But no, though they both had some claim on her as fathers, she was not their daughter. Mama, she thought. Her mother, frail in her bed, dying. Isika shied away from the painful memory, but surfacing, she heard horrible laughter in the air and smelled the smoke that hung over the city, so she dove back down.
Her mother, lying back on her pillow, so thin, her dark brown face still so beautiful against the rough sheets. Her eyes shiny with tears.
“Mama,” Isika was saying in the memory. “Don’t leave us. Come back to us.”
“You don’t understand, my girl. I don’t want to go, but my spirit is broken. I fought so hard to save us. And now Aria is gone. Nothing I did mattered.”
“It’s not true,” Isika insisted. “Everything you did mattered.” But Amani turned her face away. She didn’t understand.
Isika rode, her horse’s feet pounding the ground, tears streaming down her face. They ran, and she wept, and she looked at the ground and pleaded with it.
“You were a meadow!” she shouted, “You were grassy and filled with flowers! Remember what you were! Come back! Live!”
Keethior let out a long cry, and Isika turned to look back at him.
In their wake was a path of green, new, fresh grass, like a wide stripe across the blackened meadow, dotted with tiny purple and yellow flowers, nodding in the breeze. They ran to the end of the field and turned, running on the perimeter. Isika threw her hand out, pointing, and the grass sprang up, not only where the horses ran, but running into the center, to meet the long stripe of green that had come.
Her mother in the Desert city, holding little Aria, whispering to Isika.
“We have to go, little one. A kind man will help us. We have to find a new place to live, get your brother back and run away.”
“My brother?” Vaguely, young Isika remembered the boy she saw sometimes, skinny and small, wailing across the courtyard. Was that her brother? Had she forgotten?
Running in the night, so so tired. The little crying boy beside her, often crying, so skinny. Her mother, holding him and singing over him every night, until Isika was eaten up with jealousy.
“Shhh,” she would tell Isika in their small tent. “He never had time with me. You have never left my side. There is plenty of love for both of you.”
Staring at him by the fire in the night, so curious. One day, walking to him and taking his hand, bringing him over to the big rocks to show him how fun it was to jump off them. The little boy, his eyes big, flinching and looking at their mother as though they would be in trouble for jumping. Their mother nodding at him.
“It’s no trouble, my sweet Benayeem.”
The days, learning to play together, to be brother and sister, with the little one, Aria. Running and bringing back flowers for their mother. Ben’s cries at night, the sound of their mother singing over him.
I’m her daughter, she told Keethior.
Yes, he said back to her, only a speck in the sky.
But I’m his daughter too. We don’t get to choose to be only one.
You get to choose to be whatever you want.
I want to leave. I want to leave forever. I can’t bear that I’m bringing them close to so much danger.
You can’t leave. The speck in the sky was getting bigger now, it was coming closer, and Isika heard the humming coming off of the giant bird, a beautiful song of love and loss. You are their hope. Look. What the gatherers and healers could not do, all of them together, you did.
Isika turned from where she was still trotting Wind around the perimeter of the field.
It was green. All of it. Tiny young shoots of grass carpeted the ground, and the other horses had stopped running and bent to eat. She flicked her awareness toward Wind and heard him trying not to think about food because it wouldn’t be polite if she wanted to ride farther. She laughed and dismounted, letting him wander over to the other horses. He tore mouthfuls of grass mixed with the tiny purple flowers.
Do the flowers taste good? she asked him, pulling at her braids, hot on her neck.
Spicy and sweet, he said.
Isika looked around and saw that they were close to a wooded area, on the far edge of the meadow, away from the city. She remembered walking through this grove to watch the rangers fight fire. The little stand of trees was blackened as well, with a thick layer of ashes that covered the ground. Isika wandered into it, her heart aching for the trees. A storm of ash erupted as she stepped in, and she closed her eyes, leaning one hand against a tree. The tree felt empty, as though it had left its shell behind, but when Isika leaned in, she found the humming she was looking for.
Come back, she breathed, and waited. After a moment or two, a gust of energy burst out of the roots of the tree, flowing upward, and the tree’s heart buzzed with life again. With her eyes still closed, Isika could see light pouring into all its branches. She felt the ground humming and realized the tree was calling to the others in the grove through its roots, calling them back. She kept her eyes closed, lending all the strength she could to the trees, and when the air was still and the buzzing had calmed, she opened them.
She stood on a green, thick-woven carpet of grass, tiny flowers woven in the midst of the springy blades. These little wildflowers had more colors than were in the meadow, they were like a sunset in different shades of red, orange, and purple. The trees had lost their ashy cast and leaves had returned to their branches, forming a mixture of sun and shade in the grove.
Isika sighed as the ache lifted from her heart. She sat down at the base of one of the trees, suddenly weary. It wasn’t enough to sit, so she lay all the way down, curling up at the roots of the tree, letting her eyes drift closed.
She thought she slept for a long time with the sun high in the sky. A tall, tall man came into the grove, someone Isika hadn’t seen before, but when she turned her head to look at him, she saw that she did know him, this being whose dark brown skin glowed with an inner light, so when the sun caught it, he shone like gold.
“You’ve never come to me this way before,” Isika breathed. “Is this what you look like?”
“You always ask me that,” Nenyi said, and his voice was like every beautiful song Isika had ever heard. “And I always tell you the same thing. I come in a way you can see me. I can look tiny or big, young one. I am male and female. You cannot contain me in a shape.” He laughed. “I have forms so terrifying you would perish if you saw them. So I come quietly.”
Isika was weeping. The man came closer and Isika saw that his eyes were very kind. He reached one gold flecked hand out, but Isika cringed away, still crying.
“Don’t touch me. I’m dirty. Do you know who my father is?”
“Of course I do. I shaped you. I shaped your father.”
“Why did you let him turn into this?”
Nenyi sat back against the tree and held a hand up, turning it back and forth so Isika could see that there was something else there, in his hand, glistening and dancing in the wind; a tiny golden thread, so thin it seemed it would break.
“Careful!” she said, without thinking of whom she was talking to. Heat rushed to her fact. The Shaper. She had actually just told the Shaper to be careful. He didn’t scold her, though.
“It’s very strong,” he said, in that same beautiful voice. It was a voice that made Isika want to swim, to jump, to dance. When she heard it, she thought she could do anything. “Though it doesn’t look strong.”
Isika tried to see where the thread was going. It fell from Nenyi’s hand and trailed along the ground for a while. Maybe it was why Nenyi had come. So Isika would find something at the end of the thread, something that would help her change everything, help her solve the problem. She could never join her father. But she didn’t want the mud demons to burn Maween. This was the question: should she join them to protect Maween, take all her trouble away? Or stay and fight, knowing that if they burned the city, it would be her fault. She looked at the thread that trailed along the ground, a golden line draping over bits of grass between her and Nenyi.
“May I?” she asked.
“Of course. It is yours, too,” Nenyi replied.
She picked it up and realized it really was stronger than it looked. It was warm to the touch, almost as though it was alive. She shivered. She skimmed her fingers along it, until she felt a tugging on her other hand. Slowly, she lifted the hand and stared at it. The thread was connected to her.
“It needs to be stronger,” Nenyi said, his voice a warm buzz that somehow carried warmth and warning at the same time. Isika stared at him. Nenyi went on. “Though yours is stronger than most.”
“How do I make it stronger?” Isika whispered.
“Trust. It’s the only way. Every time you are afraid, turn your heart back to the earth, the singing trees, the simple birds, and remember that you are shaped. You are made to open your hands and receive. This is the kind of trust that changes your thread.” Nenyi looked up and there was great sadness and kindness in his eyes.
“It’s why your father is the way he is. I did not want it, but he cut the thread. If someone wants to cut the thread, I must let it be cut. But if your thread is intact, if it is stronger, no one can claim you, young Isika. Not your father, not even your beautiful mother or grandmother. You belong to me.”