The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,17
him either—one of my guards, Bryn, has her heart-shaped face turned his way, one corner of her mouth curled up. Distracted, she doesn’t notice Rheesi dropping the rope until the sudden pull of it topples Bryn into the water.
From my earliest memories, my guards have towered over me. Infallible and mighty, bringing with them the comfort of invulnerability no matter where I went. Now, beyond the temple and its city, with their mistakes peppering the water with ripples and Bryn’s face pink as she looks anywhere but at Maita’s shoulders … they seem all too human.
A little shiver runs through me, and before I can examine it—or the little ache I feel at the sight of handsome Maita laughing and offering his hand to help Bryn back to her feet—I lurch from my seat and move toward the edge of the barge. “This is silly,” I call, interrupting their chatter. “It will be easier with six.”
“Wait, Divine One,” Elkisa calls breathlessly. “In a moment you can disembark more easily.”
“A little water will not harm me,” I reply lightly, reaching down to grasp the gunwale of the barge before jumping into the knee-deep water. “And I wish to help.” I don’t say the true reason I can’t stay on the barge any longer: I’m too restless to wait uselessly while they work, as though finishing this task might make morning come more quickly, and with it, the rest of my journey.
I wade over toward Maita and reach for the rope he’s been hauling on, careful to stay several paces behind him, beyond his reach. He glances down, noting the distance between us with a nervous flick of his eyes.
Capac throws Elkisa a questioning look, and when my guard merely shrugs, he warily signals us to resume hauling the barge onto the riverbank. After a few seconds, he begins to sing, a rhythmic call-and-response work song traditional among the riverstriders.
The rope tears at my palms, which are unused to its rough fiber, but the burn is nothing compared to the exhilaration of joining my people at work. The high priest would howl to see me, and the Graycloaks would scoff and call me undignified—but in this moment, I’m no longer Nimhara, Forty-Second Vessel of the Divine; I’m just Nimh.
Dragging at this rope, my feet cooled by the water, I am more real, more seen, in this private moment than when I perform the intricate dances and rituals of the divine before hundreds of worshippers, all watching me with hungry eyes.
I lean back against the pull of the rope and let my eyes rest on the shift and change of muscle in Maita’s back some distance ahead of me. In another life, I might have married a riverstrider boy like him. I would’ve spent my days hauling on these ropes with him, or mending fishing nets, or diving for river lettuce. This could have been my world, between sun and water and the muddy borders of the forest-sea… .
Maita shifts his grip, turning to face me and pull against his shoulder—and we both see that the rope has slid a little in his hands, and he’s too close to me. He lets go, recoiling from me so violently that he staggers back waist-deep in the water, striking the barge with a painful thunk.
Capac calls a halt as Elkisa throws her rope down and comes splashing toward us, her gaze wide with alarm. Her agitated questions are a hazy litany, my eyes still on Maita’s face, as ashen as if he’d just been pulled back from the edge of a yawning abyss.
I shake my head in response to Elkisa’s concern—no, I am not hurt. No, he did not touch me.
Yes, I will wait back beneath the trees while they finish securing the barge.
My body tingles as I drop down onto a fallen tree, muscles here and there twitching from such a sudden end to the unfamiliar effort. From there, I watch as the riverstriders and temple guards resume their task—Bryn says something too low for me to hear at this distance, and Maita and the others burst into tension-relieving laughter.
What good does it do to imagine another life? I ask myself, blinking and turning away, fixating on the heavy stillness of the forest in the hope that it will still my mind. This was never for you.
Except that it was, once. I was never meant to be a goddess. My predecessor, Jezara, didn’t pass her divinity to the next deity upon her death, as