“Cloedeya, I told the witch that I would take care of Maedreth.” It was morning, and the others were gathered for breakfast, sitting together at the table. Only Tafaemi and Uku were absent, still cloistered in the sleeping wagon. Manrie didn’t want to think of their bodies lying together, the sheen of sweat, the shared stench of morning breath. Everyone at the table had bathed, going to the river and coming back together. Koenbahki had been at the river and had joined them. She was sitting beside Manrie and Little Praeda was in her lap, eating a piece of rye bread that was sticky with honey.

  Manrie’s announcement cut through the general chatter. Taeyaho started visibly and dropped a hard-boiled egg. Melsa looked up from some internal dialog that had been taking all of her attention, and began to fan her wide shoulders back and forth. Big Praeda’s cheeks flushed, as if Manrie had somehow embarrassed her. Cloedeya stared at her with his mismatched eyes.

  “The witch?” he asked. “You talked to the witch?”

  “Yes,” Manrie said, regretting that she had raised the subject and interrupted the light, relieved feeling of the breakfast. The morning sunlight was crisp and clear and it fell among the biscuits and steamed buns and little dishes of sauce and curry, seeming to bless them with a bright, citrusy aura. There was no shadow of cloud in the sky, but Manrie knew that she had brought a shadow. She tried to make amends by saying, lightly, “She’s a ghost, of course. I didn’t know that ghosts could talk.”

  “She didn’t curse you?” Koenbahki asked, and she allowed a teasing note into her voice. Yes, her tone said, the witch could be a joke, or if not a joke, an object of amused curiosity. Manrie was grateful.

  “Who’s Maedreth?” Little Praeda asked, smearing her cheek with honey.

  “She’s the matriarch of Jahnajeel House, although nobody seems to know it,” Koenbahki said.

  “Why don’t they know it?”

  “She says ‘don’t see me, don’t see me,’ over and over again, and so they don’t,” Manrie told her, as if it were humorous, instead of very sad.

  “Don’t see me,” Praeda said, trying it out, and Koenbahki pretended that she wasn’t there, plucking an orange from the table and beginning to peel it on top of her head. Praeda let out a squeal of laughter, but Cloedeya’s expression remained serious.

  “It was her, then. In the veils. That was the witch.”

  “Don’t tell Tafaemi that she was right,” Manrie said, and regretted that, too, as everyone glanced towards the sleeping wagon.

  “And she came here to reveal the truth, to tell her story, like we heard last night.”

  “What was the story?” Melsa asked.

  “Too sad,” Taeyaho said, shaking his head quickly from side to side, like a dog trying to get dry. “Too sad, too sad.”

  “Yes,” Cloedeya agreed, nodding imperceptibly toward Little Praeda. “Not a good story for breakfast.”

  “See me, see me!” Little Praeda squeaked, giggling and upsetting the pile of orange peels that was balanced in her hair, sending them flopping down her shoulders and into her lap.

  “I see you,” Koenbahki assured her, and kissed her head.

  “But can she?” Manrie asked.

  “Can she what?”

  “Travel with us? Can we take Maedreth with us?”

  “Yes,” Cloedeya said. “Of course. It will be very tight, until the new wagon is built.”

  “Can I…” Koenbahki said, suddenly shy, “can I come with you, too?”

  They all turned their heads and considered her. Manrie felt compelled to reach out and take her hand, to reassure her as the silent decision was made. “You would leave your husband?” Cloedeya asked.

  “I do not love him. He tries to be kind, but he belongs to that house,” she gave a little shudder. “I do not want to remain there.”

  “We will go to Yenceyan, eventually,” Cloedeya said softly, as if warning her.

  “I know. I guessed. But it will be all right, if I’m with you. We wouldn’t want to go there now, anyway. Not until things have settled down again.”

  “It is good we’re going east, then,” Cloedeya said. He moved his gaze around the table. “It seems that the caravan grows.”

  “Is this the biggest it’s ever been?” Manrie asked.

  “Oh yes. Until a few years ago it was just Melsa, Big Praeda, and me. We only had one wagon.”

  “The First Family,” Koenbahki suggested.

  But this caused Cloedeya’s face to cloud, and his right eye wandered away, as if it were too embarrassed to look at her. “We don’t think of ourselves like that. We’re not like that. We have no First Families.” Then he clapped his hands and wiped crumbs from his robe. “We’ll leave today. As soon as we can. We’re going east, to the Man on the Mountain. We need more discs. I’ve already thought of the meal that we’ll cook for him. There are mushrooms growing in the foothills that growl and roar like a lion.” He said this to Little Praeda, who laughed and clapped her hands.

  They all began to get up, to tidy away breakfast, to begin to pack. Manrie fetched a bucket of water from the Nahrm cistern. The people of the house wove through the courtyard, going about their private business. Some children appeared and began to play with Little Praeda. Melsa led Koenbahki onto the top of the pantry wagon and began showing her how to secure the plants and tend the sourdough. Taeyaho collected plates and brought them to Manrie. He stood beside her, holding a rag for drying and singing under his breath.

  The side of the sleeping wagon opened and Uku shambled out, just in time to seize the last of the breakfast scraps before they were put away. Manrie saw Tafaemi through the open wagon side, turning slightly, moving her hands in front of her face, soft, lazy, satiated. She rose and one breast was exposed before she slowly pulled her robes together. She saw Manrie looking at her and smirked.

  Big Praeda had gone into the pantry wagon, and now she emerged. Her purplish lips were pursed, and the line of acne on her forehead seemed to flare with distress. “Cloedeya,” she said, and her voice was terse. In the other wagon, Tafaemi went still, listening. Cloedeya, who was at the table, cutting the remaining rolls into thin slices for toasting, turned his head. Manrie, observing this tableau, felt the world pause.

  “Cloedeya,” Big Praeda said, “the okubrahchi is missing.”

  It had some meaning that Manrie didn’t understand. The okubrahchi? Wasn’t that the dried bat that was kept in the bag beside the butterfly cocoon? Two bats, someone had said, and they mated for life. Cloedeya had turned his head and was looking at Uku, who was taking surprisingly dainty bites out of the remains of a steamed bun. Cloedeya turned to look at Tafaemi. Big Praeda stepped from the wagon and went to stand beside Cloedeya. She, too, looked at Tafaemi.

  “What have you done?” Cloedeya asked.

  “Done?” Tafaemi pushed her shoulders back and lifted her breasts, as if they were a shield. “I haven’t done anything.”

  “You were making your own dish, at the banquet. You wouldn’t let me see it. And then no one ate it. Or I thought no one ate it.”

  “It wasn’t good. I thought that I could cook. I was embarrassed to try.”

  “I ate it,” Uku said softly. He was looking from face to face, sensing that this had something to do with him. “She brought it to me. Last night, after the ghosts marched through. The spirits, the specters, the shades.”

  “Tafaemi,” Big Praeda said, and her voice was very low, as if she intended to knock the woman’s knees out with it, “did you feed the okubrahchi to Uku?”

  “Why?” Manrie asked into the pause that followed. “What would it do?”

  “They mate for life,” Cloedeya said. “For life. They are always engaged in the act of mating. Their bodies joined together. They are the greatest aphrodisiac that I know of.”

  “Aphrodisiac?” Taeyaho asked.

  Uku said, “Love potion. Philter. Elixir.”

  “Is that why Uku went to your bed last night? Did you poison him?”

  “Poison?” Tafaemi protested. “How could it be poison? It gave him pleasure.”

  “You said that no one ever loves you in the way you want to be loved. Is that how you want to be loved?”

  Cloedeya’s tone was too soft, hinting at understanding. Manrie felt a flush creep over her body. She was finding it hard to breathe. “You raped him,” she said.

  Tafaemi scoffed. “Rape? How could it be rape? He came willingly.”

  “No,” Big Praeda said. “You poisoned him. You robbed him of his will.”

  “I didn’t!” Tafaemi spat. She was enraged. Her whole body was quivering.

  They were all staring at her. No one moved. The silence stretched, inviting her to condemn herself. She refused.

  “Am I still a slave?” Uku asked softly.

  Manrie turned to him. He was moving his enormous jaw back and forth, as if chewing on something. She saw him as she had first seen him at the gate of Macbrau’s compound. His robes were still ragged. His belly still peeped through the opening. Not beautiful, but still, she felt the softness of his mouth on her fingers from when she had fed him during the sandstorm. “Uku,” she breathed.

  “Well,” Tafaemi said, “if you are all going to stare at us like that, perhaps we will stay here, in Raesidae, and not travel with the caravan.”

  “You will stay in Raesidae,” Cloedeya said. “Uku will come with us.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her thick, enameled hair. “You are mine, aren’t you, lover?”

  The giant blinked. “I stay with Tafaemi,” he said.

  “Uku,” Manrie stepped forward. “Uku, she’s trapped you. It’s the okubrahchi.”

  “You won’t stay anywhere,” Big Praeda said, seething. “You’ll be exiled. We’ll tell the First Families what you’ve done. They won’t have you in Raesidae.”

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  “They won’t? Do you think that Pruetahna Zairiset will care?”

  “She’ll care,” Koenbahki called from the top of the pantry wagon. “Why would she want you here? She’ll see you as competition.”

  “That shriveled old crone?”

  “She’s what you’ll be, when you’re old.”

  “Enough,” Cloedeya said. “Leave, Tafaemi. Leave, and never come into our presence again.”

  Tafaemi tried to stare them down. She wouldn’t bow her head, but after a moment she turned aside, as if inspecting the sleeping wagon. “Uku,” she snapped, “gather my unguents.”

  He moved to obey her. “Uku, don’t,” Manrie said.

  But he didn’t look at her. He stepped forward, and for the first time his size was threatening. No one tried to stand in his path. Manrie threw her dish cloth at him. It slapped into his back and fell off, leaving a soapy damp spot. She turned to Cloedeya, “When will it wear off? The okubrahchi?”

  He was pale. “They mate for life.”

  “Then why do you even have it?”

  He turned his head towards Big Praeda. “We agreed. We chose it. We kept it for anyone else who wanted to choose it.” He lowered his head. “We should have gotten rid of it.”

  Manrie was so angry that she could have struck him. Instead she strode forward, intending to put her body in front of Uku. But he had already reached the wagon, and was helping Tafaemi down. Manrie grabbed at his arm and hung from it. It did nothing to arrest his steady movement. Tafaemi, reaching the beaten earth of the courtyard, sneered at Manrie and struck her across the shoulders with a fan.

  “Cloedeya! Help me!” she cried.

  He stepped forward uncertainly. Big Praeda brushed past him and slapped Tafaemi across the face. The other woman cried out. “Uku, stop them!” she demanded. He turned, his large body threatening everyone. He shook his arm and Manrie fell into the dirt.

  “I am a slave,” he said. “I am her slave.” His voice was mournful, but there was no rage in it, no desire to writhe against his circumstances.

  “If I go, he comes with me,” Tafaemi said, challenging them all.

  She swept from the courtyard, Uku at her side, as the others trembled with inaction. Manrie pushed herself up and ran again to block their path. Someone was running with her. She saw a flash of golden hair and knew that it was Taeyaho. They spun their bodies in front of the giant and Manrie began beating at him. He flung out a huge arm and swept them away. Again they were up, going through the entrance tunnel, out onto the road, where Tafaemi and Uku had turned towards the west.

  “I think we will take a boat,” Tafaemi was saying.

  Taeyaho fell to the ground in front of her, trying to trip her, but she stepped over him, sneering with contempt. Manrie grabbed the hem of her robes and pulled. There was a ripping sound, and Tafaemi turned to her, outraged. The robe had come open along the front, exposing her nakedness. She looked down at her own body, then smirked. She turned, deciding to leave it that way, and Manrie dropped the hem of the robe. Tafaemi would walk naked down to the beach if she had to, and expect everyone to admire her.

  But Taeyaho was up. He ran past Uku and Tafaemi and stopped in the road in front of them. He started to sing, loudly, aggressively. It was unlike any song he had ever sung before. A song of anger. Of outrage. Uku picked him up by his shoulders and gently placed him at the side of the road. They went past.

  The road was sloping down towards the beach. Manrie ran past them. The fishermen were out on the lake. There were only three boats left beached on the sand. She ran to one and began turning it over. It was heavy and sand flaked from its side, scattering across her robes. It came onto its keel and rocked back and forth. “Taeyaho, help me!” she shouted, and she began to push it towards the water. He was beside her in a moment, but she shook her head. “The other boats. We have to get them off of the beach.”

  It was too late. A large hand clasped her shoulder. She was hunched over, pushing at the stern, shoving it, cursing. Uku lifted her. She struggled in his grip. Her feet left the ground. He turned her and looked into her face. His expression was very sad. Then he set her down on the beach and lifted up the stern and pushed the boat as if it were a plow, delving a deep rut into the wet sand. Tafaemi walked beside him, carrying her basket of unguents, her head lifted imperiously, her mouth pressed into a self-satisfied smile.

  Taeyaho made to run in front of them, but Manrie snapped at him. “The other boats. We can follow them!”

  They scrambled to turn over a gray, shallow, weather-beaten boat, to push it along in Uku’s wake. The other boat was already on the water, Tafaemi seated in the prow, smiling back at them. Wintry. Cruel. Gloating. Uku sat in the stern, also facing them, working the heavy oars. There was a wind on the beach, and clouds had appeared on the horizon. They were scudding violently across the sky, as if they wanted to plane away the morning’s sunshine. Water, soaking Manrie’s feet, and then she was in the boat, and Taeyaho was leaping in behind her. They rocked violently in the shallow water. Then the boat surged forward as he found the oars.

  A voice from the beach. “Manrie! Uku! Come back!” Koenbahki’s voice, and Little Praeda’s under it.

  “Come back! Come back!”

  But she would not go back. She wouldn’t glance back. How could they let this happen? How could they simply decide that Tafaemi should win? How could they accept Uku’s slavery?

  The other boat was making towards the middle of the lake. The wind was swirling around them, as if they had summoned it with their anger, with the poisoning of the joy they had all shared at breakfast, with the clap of thunder that had occurred within them when Big Praeda announced that the okubrahchi was gone. Okubrahchi! It was disgusting. Creatures that mated for life. That flew through the air while mating. That swallowed insects, defecated, slept, gave birth, while mating! This world was full of things like that. Horrors. Monsters. Their true nature revealed, even as Cloedeya tried to claim that they were good, a gift. She could imagine him chewing the meat of the okubrahchi, closing his mismatched eyes as his face went slack with sensual delight. She could imagine Melsa and Big Praeda eating, delicately, carefully, savoring the flavors, looking at each other, feeling something lock within themselves, allowing their willpower, their freedom of choice, to fall away. All for what? So that they could be united in their love? If you could call it love. No. Manrie didn’t see it as the enshrinement of their commitment to each other, no matter how they thought of it. They had done it because they wanted to taste the okubrahchi. They had done it because the land had seduced them.

  A peel of actual thunder. The wind over the lake was cold. It bit into her face and she stared ahead. The other boat was drawing further away. Uku was too strong. Taeyaho couldn’t keep up. The water was choppy. The other boat moved on its swells, thrusting upwards, then seeming to sink behind the ridge of the following wave. Rising and sinking, and this movement filled Manrie with distaste. The very movement of mating. No wonder Tafaemi had chosen it. Let the storm come. Let it drown the other boat. Uku could swim. He would escape. Tafaemi would go to the bottom, weighed down by her basket of unguents.

  A voice, crying over the water. At first Manrie thought that it was Koenbahki and Praeda on the beach. But they were far behind, now. It was the witch. The witch’s voice, calling her curses over the land. *Curse Tafaemi!* Manrie thought. *Make it real. Make it so no one will love her!* She willed the voice to grow stronger. She willed the words to become specific, to call out Tafaemi’s name.

  An island loomed on the starboard side. Hard rocks, black with rain. Trees somehow clinging to the bluffs, thrashing back and forth. Waves battering up over the stone, as if to submerge the entire island. And a voice, crying out, loud, imperious, as strong as the storm.

  But otherwise occupied. “Curses on Jahnajeel house! Curses in this and every generation! Curses on the children of Braedsmi! Curses on the children of Haelahza! Curses on the children of Nuhrmer!”

  It was unfair. What use were these curses, if they didn’t interfere with Tafaemi’s crime? The witch had claimed that her curses brought justice. Where was that justice? It was overwhelmed by, swamped by, obliterated by vengeance.

  At the stern of the boat, Taeyaho began to sing. As if he could drown out the witch’s voice. A loud song, yet still delicate, somehow. Mournful, his tone the same that he had used as she had walked into the barrow. “Here is the thin boy, so good at spotting fish, the boy of mud and sand bars, of shadows over the river, the boy who wandered far to the west, and came to streams where beaver taught him how to swim. And here is the girl who goes in pursuit of knowledge, who cannot keep from helping, who stares into faces as if she’s studying a map, who wants to find some path to goodness, who has stopped looking for monstrous lairs. They ride together on the waves.

  “And there is the big man, stolen away from generous love, made slave in the city of ink-spots, made to sit on benches and run alongside the curiosity of scholars, made to scrape dead flesh, to turn the paddle through urine vats, to bate leather in animal brains. Always the stench, always the reek of dead things made useful within a cauldron of waste. There is the giant, who took refuge in words, who turned them and saw them change and clothed himself in them and found warmth.”

  Manrie found that she was crying. It was as if Taeyaho were trying to convince the witch of something, to show her the rapturous beauty of the people rowing past her island, to turn her from curses to wonder. Manrie knew that Taeyaho had truly seen her, as he truly saw Uku, and saw himself. But then his song turned to Tafaemi.

  “There is the little girl who played with dolls, who tried to wring an ounce of love from an old rag with a painted on face. Who sat at her father’s feet as he worked at his bench, as he heated his crucibles, as he pounded his pestles. There is the little girl who he touched in the night, and filled with fear. Who tried to take refuge in other children, and found the fingers of boys, straying beneath her clothing. Who tried to find safety in the man of the caves, who lay with her although his eyes were full of tunnels, his forehead scorched by the pursuit of darkness. They ride together on the waves.”

  “Be quiet, Taeyaho!” Manrie shouted at him. “You can’t be on her side! You can’t still want to lay with your head in her lap! She’s not your mother! She’s a monster!”

  He fell silent. The island was falling away, the witch’s voice skirling off into the pummeling wind. Another flash of lightning. The thunder right above them. For a moment the sky opened, a long vein of light shining through and falling onto the roiling water, like it was making a path for them. Manrie could not see the other boat within the slicing light. Then it was gone, and the rain came, fast and hard, and they were enclosed in it, lost on the water.

  They could not turn back now if they wanted to. Who knew where the shore was? Who knew where the island was? They were in a place of swirling darkness, worse than the barrow. She suddenly realized what she had done, when she had thrown the disc out into that distant sea. The dead of Raesidae were condemned to a realm of chaos, of sudden storms and thrashing waters. They would never again know the deep silence of that darkest place within the barrow. She had been cruel without knowing it. And they had somehow reached back out to her, intending to force her to share their fate.

  A lightning strike, and the water flared for a moment, showing the loom of land to their left. Trees bent under the tumult, so that their tops almost touched the water. “Taeyaho, there!” Manrie cried, thinking that he could somehow steer the boat beneath the shelter of the bowed branches. But there was nothing he could do. The land shot past them, a dark and dangerous shadow. Lake water seemed to boom against it, and the rain wanted to cut slices from it, as if it were meat on Cloedeya’s cutting board.

  Taeyaho lost control of the boat. One moment they were surging straight ahead, and the next they were swirling, Manrie’s insides gripped as they tipped to the side. She was screaming. She glanced back. The oars had been snatched from Taeyaho’s hands by the water. He was hunched forward, staring at her from under his soaked hair, an expression of lugubrious sorrow on his face. A mere glance, to tell her that he had surrendered. Had she? The boat was about to turn over, and the water would take her, and she would drown.

  She screamed again, inarticulate, and shifted her weight, insisting that her small body, her small impact on the world, should save her life. A branch scudded by, and she grabbed, and brought the boat into alignment with its drag. There was another one, and she glanced behind her, and saw a whole tree, fallen into the water, rushing along with it, reaching out to seize them and hold them in its crown. She closed her eyes and heard the crunch of the branches against the hull. But they were still floating, somehow. When she opened her eyes again Taeyaho was clinging to a branch that had gone through the stern, as if it were a rudder. The boat was filling with water. He reached his hand out to her.

  “We need to climb!”

  She lunged towards him and he caught her. He was wet and very thin, frail even. A leaf to be swept away. But he pressed her hands to the branch, and together they crawled up it, out of the boat, leaves thrashing their faces. She was cut and there was blood running into her eyes. She was only aware of it because it was warmer than the rain. The tree was swaying, thrashing, beginning a long turn. Together they crawled through the branches, trying to stay ahead of the spin towards the water. But they were losing their race. The tree was turning too quickly, and the water was reaching up towards them. She felt Taeyaho’s arms go around her, pressing her to a thick branch. “Breathe!” he cried in her ear, and she pulled in a huge breath and held it, and they slipped beneath the water.

  The press of oxygen against her lungs. The water trying to tear her from the tree. Taeyaho’s body pressed against her, lifting with the waves, but his arms adamant, strong, pinning her in place. The storm’s sound drowned by the water. Not peace, but a different kind of chaos. Weight pulling at them, pulling them down. She kept her eyes open. She imagined that she could see to the bottom of the lake, that she could see a window there, and beyond the window there was a bright world, where everything was upside down.

  Then the tree turned, and they were in air again, and she breathed hugely, and choked on rain. Taeyaho was still there, still pinning her, and she could feel his ravished breaths against her back. She didn’t think they could survive another dunking, and almost welcomed the loom of the shore as it rushed up at them.

  A tremendous crash, the tree trying to root its high branches in the muddy bank. Wood splintered all about them, and she heard Taeyaho cry out. His body when limp, but she was turning, and grabbing him, so that he would tumble with her down the slide of slick limbs and sudden kindling onto the bank. They rolled, hearing crashing all around them, and were showered with a second rain from the trees that were breaking above them. A shape came down at them, branches cracking, leaves scattering, a tremendous noise. The trunk missed them by feet. A curved branch swept the dirt above and below them, and made a roof for them. They were trapped together. Taehayo’s breath was small, a tiny bird fluttering against her neck. She stared up into the storm and thought that she could see his spirit fluttering away. He would never go to a barrow. His ghost would always be free in the world, but hidden, known only as the strange passage of a warm breeze.

  “Don’t die, Taeyaho,” she cried into his hair. “Don’t die!”

  Another lightning strike, but the thunder came later. The storm was dying. Yet there was still a thrashing in the branches that she didn’t understand. And then she heard voices. Perhaps it was Uku, come to save them. A rending sound, and branches were lifted away above them. The dark sky turned to a cold gray. Faces looming down at them. At first a stranger’s. And then coppery hair flattened by the rain against a wide forehead. Wrinkles around the eyes that looked like the frills of a toadstool. A poisonous sheen to the wet face, and the smell of fungi, somehow ripe above the smell of turned earth.

  “Ah,” a voice said. “Aizdha’s little slave girl. How fortunate.”