63. The Whispering Hills (Adranaya)¶
The dust that composed 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. Occasionally, huge dust clouds would roll over them, leaving them completely blind, and they’d have to stop and wait it out lest they get off course. The only benefits to the dust were that it provided protection from the glaring sun and 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, 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 the others felt the same pangs, but—unlike her companions—she had never gone hungry before. She’d never been great at managing cravings, and the hunger 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 disquiet 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 seemed disappointed with her conversation, but any attempt at discussing it caused a spike of panic to ripple through the Gyre. 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 the threshold of 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—a disturbingly plausible idea, given what cats were like. But the way the family had treated Işen had stuck with Adra since childhood, one of her most persistent worries. And 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, but no one responded. Gadarien pulled the door open, his hand on his knife, 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, and 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 handprints, 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’d 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 her 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. She jumped and whipped around, but, as always, no one was there.
Vaye and Gadarien emerged from the cabin, their expressions somber. Adra wished they had the means to clean the cabin, feeling they owed it to the former occupants. But the furs, while stinky, would be warm, 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.
They filed around the building to the hot spring. The steaming pool was surrounded by volcanic rocks, with more rocks forming rough steps and seats in the water. After the cloying stench of the cabin, the sulfur 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 bliss. “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 hungry void beneath.
She inhaled the steam, sliding almost unconsciously into the balance trance. The emptiness inside her felt as black and deep as the night, 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 that 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. The intensity of the spell had ramped back up as they neared the Tine, their sensations once again melding into a single whole. In silence, they moved together, their touches slow and wondering, as though they were discovering each other for the first time. Tendrils of steam wrapped around them like roots, pushing the distance between them out of the way. There was simply no room for it between their skins.
“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 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.”
“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,” Adra said. “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, and Adra loved her for that.
In the pool, it wasn’t like it had been on the rooftop of the School. There was no intermediary, no filtering of desire or sensation, nothing given that was not wanted and nothing wanted that was not given. Any separation that remained between them was washed away with the dust, selfishness and jealousy carried away by the billowing steam.
When they were done, they fell asleep beside the water, woven together like the finest cloth.
The sunrise in the morning was glorious, the wash of pink and orange setting the hills aglow and raising Adra’s spirits. For just a little while that morning, the whispers left her alone.
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