63. The Whispering Hills (Adranaya)¶
The dust that comprised the Whirling Wastes was finer than talc and seemed to stick to just about everything, coating all three of them with a ghostly, ash-like patina. It was also caustic, giving Adra a persistent nosebleed and making her hair stick together in bizarre clumps. The one benefit was that it seemed to suppress odors, which was quite useful in a place with nowhere to bathe.
After four blinding, interminable days, tufts of grass finally began springing up through the white crust. Soon a sea of soft blue-green fronds, waist-high, tickled the bottoms of their arms as they walked. Sometimes the grass rustled, but the only living creature they saw was a solitary fox disappearing into the underbrush, its silvery tail blending in with the foliage.
A day later, the sea of grass lapped up against stony hills. Overhead, waves of clouds rolled past in long, gray rows, and the air echoed with the lonely sound of hawks, their tiny silhouettes black against the silvery sky. Sources of fresh water had become a memory, and the supplies they’d taken from the Tementeira were running out. They’d begun rationing, and the pain from Adra’s blisters had gradually been supplanted by her parched throat and grumbling belly. She could tell that the others felt the same pangs, but—unlike her companions—she had never gone hungry before. It distressed her far more than pain ever had. Even so, she found herself grateful for the distraction of a problem so mundane. Starvation, at least, was comprehensible.
Ever since Vaye had connected the Gyre to Grandmother, a sense of unease had been gnawing at Adra’s mind. Strangely, she had no memory of the experience itself, just a blank space between entering the trance and emerging from it some time later. Vaye had expressed disappointment with her conversation, and any attempt at discussing it caused a spike in the whole Gyre’s anxiety. As a result, they were all quite happy to leave the topic alone.
Privately, though, Adra wondered if she was going mad. She felt as though someone was always standing behind her, whispering something just below her hearing, and she frequently had to resist the urge to turn around. Her mother’s sister, Aunt Işen, had believed that the neighborhood cats were conspiring to steal her estate—an idea Adra found disturbingly plausible, given how cats behaved in general. But a more realistic fear of madness had stuck with her since childhood. After what the Healer had done to her, it seemed only rational to question her own rationality.
As they crested a hill, she spotted a thin line of smoke rising to the northwest, pale against the blue of the deepening twilight. “What is that?” she said, shading her eyes. “A village?”
“We’re days from the nearest town,” Gadarien said. “An isolated homestead, maybe.”
The idea of sleeping indoors sounded like a far-fetched luxury. The nights had grown cold, pushing the limits of their lightweight gear. The source of the smoke was a bit out of their way, but the thought of a warm meal and a night indoors was ultimately too tempting to pass up.
Up close, what had looked like smoke turned out to be steam rising from a volcanic hot spring, permeating the air with the scent of sulfur. Beside the spring, a low stone cottage with a thatched roof adjoined an overgrown field, a rusty plow leaning against the wall. There was no sign of the occupants.
They descended the hill warily, hands on their weapons. The building was made of rough logs packed with clay. “Hello?” Vaye called. No one responded. Gadarien pulled the door open, ready to leap back, but they were greeted only by a faint stench of rot. Above a dirt floor, a rack of antlers held strings of painted wooden prayer beads. In the corner, a stone fireplace extended through the roof, its hearth blackened from use. A pile of firewood stood next to it, along with a shovel, an axe, and some other tools. A few sacks and baskets were stacked neatly in the corner. On the wall by the door hung a number of heavy, mud-stained fur cloaks.
But the thing that drew Adra’s gaze was the dark smear on the ground, leading from the center of the room to the door. Several bloody hand prints, long since faded to brown, stained the doorframe. Whatever had beset these people had taken them by surprise.
The cold wind scoured the tears from Adra’s face as she stepped back outside, suddenly gripped by the grief she’d been unable to feel for herself. The cabin held little indication of where the occupants had come from or what they believed, but she felt a connection to them all the same. Perhaps they had come here seeking peace, away from the power struggles and politics of civilization, an idea that appealed to Adra more and more. But although this place was as far removed from society as you could get, death had still found them, stripping them of their identities.
There is nowhere to run, whispered the voice in her mind.
Vaye and Gadarien emerged from the cabin, their expressions somber. The steaming pool out back was surrounded by volcanic rocks, with more rocks forming rough steps and seats in the water. After the cloying stench of the cabin, the sulfurous steam was a relief. Wordlessly, they stripped off their dusty clothes and got in just as the sun dipped below the mountains.
Adra’s muscles softened in the water like biscuits in hot tea, and she sighed in relief. “I don’t think I’ve ever needed a bath so badly,” she said. Gadarien grunted his assent, dunking his head beneath the surface, while Vaye sat with her eyes closed, rubbing her temples.
They stayed in the pool until their hands and feet grew wrinkled. Adra stared up at the black silhouette of the mountains. They looked more like a gap than a solid presence, as though the rest of the sky were a piece of speckled paper and someone had torn a strip off the bottom, exposing the void beneath.
She inhaled the steam, sliding almost unconsciously into the balance trance. The emptiness inside her was as black and deep as the darkness above. But at the bottom was a flicker of hope, a swell of warmth at her core, like a candle floating in a well. In desperation, she reached for the flame, only realizing what it was when she touched it.
She opened her eyes and saw the others looking at her, connected in a way that only a Gyre could be. In silence, they moved together and embraced. Tendrils of steam wrapped around them like roots, pushing the distance that had grown between them out of the way. With skin touching skin, there was simply no room for it.
“We could stay here,” Vaye murmured. “We could leave it all behind and just be together. Learn to work the land. Gadarien could pull the plow.”
The Cantereian chuckled as he inhaled the steam. But when he looked up, it seemed the whole dark night was pooled in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I can’t let Cantereia be destroyed again. Not when I have the chance to stop it.”
“No place will be safe forever,” Adra said. “And anyway, if we hid here to save ourselves, we’d be doing the same thing that destroyed the Undone. The thing the Vorkyrda does, and Ravásie, and every other so-called leader, the thing that made the world this way in the first place. We’d be keeping our circle small.”
Vaye nodded, wiping her nose. She’d been offering the two of them a way out, even if she’d known they’d never take it. Adra loved her for that.
They washed the filthiest of their clothes and left them to dry in the wind. Adra wished they had the means to clean the cabin, feeling they owed it to the former occupants. But the furs, while stinky, were warm and dry, and the baskets and sacks in the corner were full of non-perishable food, dried beans and hardtack and mushrooms, enough to replenish their stores and then some. Among the tools were small picks, which Gadarien identified as ice-axes.
The sunrise in the morning was glorious, the wash of pink and orange setting the hills aglow and raising Adra’s spirits. For a moment, it was almost enough to make her forget about the whispers.
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