Chapter Text
Hama shook the last drops of water from her waterskin into her mouth—little pinpricks of heaven on her tongue. She swallowed them sadly. Curse this desert, and curse the old woman who sent her through it. All for some temple—what was she thinking? Surely she could have stayed in Kalay, and drink with her head under the aqueduct outlets, bathe in the public fountains, lie on her back in the grass for a rainstorm, mouth wide and wanting.
She could have stayed with Ivan. She knew she had to leave him, but she didn't understand why—not really. Every mile farther away from him tied a new knot in her stomach.
He was all she had now.
The sun plunged upon her, striking for her exposed face, neck, arms. The backs of her hands were cracked and blistered, and the hot sand and rock dust that slipped through her sandals left her feet red and raw. A flaking sunburn on her cheeks and forehead itched, and the straps of her pack felt as though they might carve canyons into her shoulders. Her dress, light as it was, could have been a suit of flames, but she feared exposure without even its meager protection.
She wanted to cry, but she couldn't spare the water—not anymore. She'd found water enough times by luck to get her this deep into the Lamakan, but her luck had run out—not enough to turn back and not enough to press on.
A vulture circled overhead, menacing her with a shadow whose mocking ease of movement was surely a request for her to lie down and die.
But Hama staggered on, following a winding strip—a path?—of stone that rose from the ever-shifting ground around her. The desert spoke, mocking her with a hot wind; it stung her eyes and seized a tear from each. She caught them on her fingers and wet her lips with them.
Grit and salt like sea spray. The ocean, miles of water in all directions, begging her to drink it. She shook her head and blinked her eyes, and the visions of water evaporated. Time passed like syrup, crusting over her consciousness as she dried out in the sun.
There had to be another spring, a little stream trickling down from the Khiren Mountains, a kind traveler with a spare waterskin—wait, who was that?
With her heart missing a beat in its weary tune, Hama looked ahead and ran for a figure she saw leaning in the meager shade of a rock formation. Yes, yes! Her savior!
She panted thankful nonsense as she ran, not caring how dry her throat was for a moment of bliss. She was going to live! Someone found her and was going to rescue her! Her tongue conjured the phantom chill of a clean drink in sparkling anticipation.
In a desperate, loving tackle, Hama leapt into the figure, and her body was met with a painful shock. A knot began swelling on her forehead, and her chest felt as though she'd been clubbed.
Blinking dust and disbelief from her eyes, she found before her little more than a pillar of rock, vaguely proportioned like a man. Despair erupted from her chest in a long, wailing scream. A few more tears escaped, and she was too hopeless to catch them on her fingers and suck them away with her lips.
The shade had been a welcome relief, but if she didn't press on, it would only make for an even slower fate. With new parts of her body pleading for surrender with each step, Hama continued onward.
Brightly-colored lizards basked in the sun, and she saw them on skewers over a sanguine fire, growing char marks inward from their tiny toes. A pile of pebbles was a heap of pomegranate pips, glistening sweetly in spearpoint sun. Sheets of sand blown down over rock faces by the wind were forbidden fountains, and the whistle of the wind was the hiss-and-trickle of a stream. Betrayal united her senses—a riot seeking relief and finding none.
Her foot strayed from the path and she stumbled into the sand, buckling her knees and bringing her to the ground on all fours. She panted heavily, feeling more moisture leave her body with each breath. Twisting pains racked her muscles, causing the flesh of her arms and legs to ripple and spasm painfully; her stomach rebelled, and she retched fruitlessly—nothing came up. She hadn't eaten in days.
A lump of fear lodged itself in her throat. The glint of a wildcat's eye shone through the heat shimmer, watching her with curiosity.
Or hunger. Please, not hunger.
With the effort of a wounded deer standing after a fall, Hama crawled back to the stone path and struggled to her feet. Her head and body swayed out of time with each other, causing her to fall again. Dust bit her blisters; hair fell over her face, shielding her eyes from the sun's glare—it was the only reprieve of any kind she'd had in hours.
Perhaps she would die lying down, withering like Mother.
A voice rumbled across Hama's ears, rousing her from slumber. She rolled onto her back in bed, looking around groggily. Moonlight poured in through the window of her room. Little Ivan was fast asleep in his bed, opposite hers.
"Hama!" said the voice again, muffled by distance and the shape of the house.
What was Mother doing awake at this hour? Hama sat up and found the floor with her toes. Dragging her feet, she stepped unsteadily through the curtain in the doorframe and traced a hand along the wall until she reached Mother's room.
"I'm here, Mother," she said, pushing the curtain aside as she entered. "Are you all right?"
"Never mind me." She coughed a few times and tidied her hair, gray-streaked violet locks looking ghostly by the light of the moon. Her voice was quiet and hoarse. "Have you found time to practice, Hama?"
It was a little late for this. "No, I... I've been taking care of you and Ivan."
"As if I'm so fragile that you have to watch me all day!" Another cough, then a sigh. "I know it's hard, but I need you to try. You're an adept; you ought to know how to use your power."
The haze of slumber around her consciousness was beginning to dissolve—so much for getting back to sleep easily. "Why? And why now? It's the middle of the night!"
"Hush—you'll wake your brother." Mother beckoned to her, fingers thin and pale. "Come here, my daughter."
That particular phrasing made Hama shiver. Mother never called her that unless she was about to make a point. Nevertheless, she approached her mother's bedside, kneeling to eye level.
Mother shifted to the edge of her bed. In a pointed and firm way, Mother's hands braced Hama's head, pushing aside the covers in the process. "Close your eyes and focus on my voice. Breathe steadily."
"I can't do it with my eyes open?"
"I'm your mother and I'm ill. Humor me," she said, before her throat was seized by the grip of another coughing fit.
Hama relented and shut her eyes. A buzz of discomfort shot across her nerves in anticipation; she never liked the feeling of using psynergy. It was like a river flowing into her head with no outlet, filling her skull to bursting.
Mother dragged her thumbs forward and backward along Hama's cheekbones and cleared her throat. "Unclench your jaw. I want you to concentrate, not grind your teeth into powder."
In a breath, out a breath; Hama did so, and after a moment, she felt her mother's hands begin to spark and flow with psynergy; her own nerves began to flutter and sing like myriad tiny birds.
Without any words crossing her lips, Mother spoke to her. The pulses and sparks that made Hama's skin itch and her head seem to swell carried words, thoughts, impulses, whole feelings siphoned straight from the mind of her mother. Images poured across her vision—flashes of shape and color danced across the darkened stage of her eyelids.
"Focus, Hama. Just my voice and what you can see. You're a descendant of the Anemos—this is your birthright."
In a breath, out a breath; Hama grunted, and her eyelids tightened, causing the dancing shapes and colors to become more defined and intense. She noticed a hoarseness, a weakness, an exhaustion that wasn't there before—something that wasn't just a longing for sleep. "Why do we have to do this now?"
"If you weren't squandering the talent I know you have, we could both be sleeping right now."
In a breath, out a breath; her heart beat hard, but not fast. Mother was sick, but how sick? Mother was tired, but how tired? It began after Ivan was born, and it never seemed to get any better. "No, I mean... don't you want to rest?"
Mother shushed her, and began to count upwards from one, each number a soldier passing in a march.
In a breath, out a breath; the little puffs of air from Mother's lips tickled her nose, smelling of sleep and an empty stomach. Mother ate so little now—days that brought appetite at all were a blessing. A scene began to emerge from the shuffle and the noise that painted her closed eyelids.
The grip of Mother's hands slackened as they hummed with psynergetic flow. Her voice reached ten, eleven, twelve, and pressed on.
In a breath, out a breath; a mountain sighed a column of smoke into the sky, and the scene melted into a figure, then a group of figures, young like her—faces she didn't recognize, except one? A young man with big, dark, wary, familiar eyes. How did she know him? The feeling ate like acid at the edges of her mind, and a silvern bank of fog swept him and the others away.
Mother's voice was a distant rumble—the patter of raindrops on a roof.
In a breath, out a breath; Hama's head ached fit to burst. Thoughts crashed across her heart and trampled her nerves, blowing away the fog. Earth and stone plunged into darkness with a crust of ice about them. Ornate walls of timber and paper assembled themselves around her, each piece falling into place of its own accord. The shine of the sun became the glow of a candle, and in another flash, the sheets and boards scattered, falling upwards and away from her.
Her mother's hands fell away, and her roiling mind fell mercifully silent; all that remained was her mother's rasping, and the staggering, pounding, shaking rhythm of her chest.
Little tendrils of fear and helplessness pried open Hama's eyes. "Wh... what was that?"
"It... it is what I have seen." Mother lay back again, nestling herself into the covers. "I don't understand what it means yet, and I... I'm not sure I'll get the chance to."
Hama's heart hollowed like timber left to termites. "Mother... don't say things like that. You'll get better! We can send for another priest from the sanctum!"
Mother turned her gaze away. "Hush, Hama. You... you'll wake your brother."
"How do you know it wasn't just a dream?"
"I've been having visions long enough to know the difference," Mother said, with some indignation. "This was as vivid and firm as the one of the wings and the crater. I told the priests at the sanctum about that one, and I'm showing you this one."
"But—"
"Hama," she said, bringing her gaze to bear on Hama like a captain steering a ship to run aground, "I don't know for certain what will become of me, but I need you to be ready. I need you to be ready to find out what this vision means, because I might not be able to. I can barely get out of bed now, and my own mother's final weeks were much like this."
Hama's voice fell to a whisper, and a tear rose in her eye. "Mother..."
With a gentle hand, Mother caught the tear and wiped it away. "Don't cry for me, Hama; promise me you'll find out what this means. You're a smart and capable girl, and it won't do for you to wallow and fuss over me."
"B-but I don't want to leave you! Why should I abandon you over some stupid vision?"
"Hush, my daughter," Mother said, pulling Hama into an embrace. "If you don't leave me, I'm afraid I'll be the one to leave you."
No. Now was no time to give up. Mother's wishes lay in her hands alone, and she could not leave them to shrivel up and blow away in the desert wind's whistling chorus of desolation. Hama struggled to her hands and knees, feeling each grain of sand bite her palms. Her skin was running out of sweat to give, and her body counted down every droplet like the granules of a sandglass to the moment of collapse.
Focus. She returned to her feet at last. Her mind swatted at the fog that encroached upon it. The air was hot and dusty in her lungs, but it was the only resource she could beg of the desert and receive.
In a breath, out a breath; the desert howled its sirocco song. Tendrils and leaves of succulents made wayside markers for Hama to follow, and she did. She could neither trust her eyes nor the visions of her mind, but she clung to them with sweat-slicked fingers. A hundred myriad grains of grit and desperation had pelted her windswept, blistering form, and she marched ever-unsteadily forward for a hundred myriad more.
A vulture's shadow swelled and shrunk as it sieved the shifting air. More lizards scattered, leading or fleeing—it did not matter which.
In a breath, out a breath; a sight unseen poured across her mind. A rippling pool of quenching crystal reflected the blue of a hostile sky. Where was it hiding? Itchy eyes offered no answer.
Insects too fast or small to see buzzed past, but her ears were keen to seek their guidance.
In a breath, out a breath; the droplets trickled down her thoughts. Her head was hot but her senses were cool, anticipating mercy of fortune or nature. Hama felt the steps blur past. Distances unraveled like tattered cloth, and the strands of her craven muscles sought to do the same. As long as she was denied reprieve, so too would they be.
Every inch of every surface dazzled and shone—whether mineral or mirage, each was a mirror, needling the eyes.
In a breath, out a breath; the world around her split as her mind carved out the truth and offered it, still bleeding, to her drying eyes. Hiding beneath the roiling air lay precious water, ringed by little plants taking root in sandy mud. Hama fell to her knees at the edge of the pool, and slaked her glowing iron thirst with frantic hands scooping and splashing toward her mouth.
She drank, able at last to thwart death for another day. She wept, able at last to overflow with delirium-like-joy. She washed, able at last to free her blisters of the sand that antagonized them.
And in the shade of gnarled shrubs, she slept, able no longer to stave off exhaustion.