The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,39
people were, who attacked us back there? Who killed those …”
I try not to think of that sight, the first shocking image of the tangle of bodies overhead, so thoroughly mutilated that I could not recognize their faces—but it does no good. I think I will see them there behind my closed eyes forever. “Members of the Cult of the Deathless. I have heard of this practice. They punish followers of the one they call the false divinity, suspending them in symbolic exile among the gods who abandoned us.”
North doesn’t answer. Either he doesn’t understand what I’m saying, or he’s simply breathing so hard that he can’t speak. I concentrate on moving as quickly and as quietly as I can, hating that I must set such a ruthless pace for him, though he keeps up with admirable determination.
“We will be safe soon,” I murmur, and I do not know whether he hears me or not. I do not know whether I was even speaking to him at all.
The stars still gleam dimly in the predawn sky when we emerge from the forest-sea. Miella and Danna hang low on the horizon, twin moons locked in their perpetual dance. The trees stop abruptly here, their growth hindered by the magic of the ancients that still lingers, though all that remains of their vast city are piles of stone and twisted metal, lying still beneath their shrouds of earth and grass.
North is some distance behind me, still struggling through the undergrowth and still choking on oaths and the insects that swarm his face. If we’d had time, I would have shown him how to wind a strip of cloth across the nose and mouth. I’d have shown him the way to find a path through the tangle of vines and roots instead of fighting them. I’d have stopped to let him rest.
When he stumbles out of the deeper shadow of the trees, my heart sinks with sympathy. His face is scratched and filthy, his thin shirt is drenched with sweat and clinging to his body, and his eyes are glazed with the effort of continuing on. Even exhausted and bedraggled, he has a presence I cannot deny. He may not know his importance, but that he is important, I do not doubt.
“A few more steps,” I say softly. “Let us put some small distance between us and the trees, and then we will rest.”
North just gives a little groan in response, but his steps—which had begun to slow after seeing me—pick up again.
We keep moving until the dim glow to the east of the plain lightens enough to throw faint shadows beneath our feet. I lead us to one of the grassy hummocks that once would have been a building tall enough to touch the clouds, and even before I can tell him it’s time to stop, North drops down onto a lichen-covered stone like a bird with broken wings.
I find to my surprise that when I move to sit, my legs collapse beneath me rather more quickly than I’d expected, and I hit the stone with a faint thud. All I want to do is fold over like North, but I know we cannot stay here for long, and if we hope to keep moving, we must drink and eat.
And talk.
North did not ask, back beneath the grisly canopy of corpses, why I was the one the cultists had been looking for. But I know the question cannot be far from his mind.
My own thoughts tangle as I try to order them. I cannot believe that this ignorant boy is the answer to my people’s suffering—and yet I do believe it; I must believe it.
If he isn’t—if the falling wreckage was not the star I read about in my vision of the lost stanza of the Song, if I wasn’t meant to make this journey and risk everything to find him …
Then half a dozen people are dead because of my mistakes, and my arrogance, and my desperation to prove I am worthy of my own divinity. If I’m wrong, then the closest thing I ever had to a friend is dead because of me.
Elkisa.
My eyes burn as her face flashes before me. I banish the thought before I start weeping in front of the cloudlander.
The bindle cat rubs his cheek against my knee, rumbling an aggressively reassuring purr, and then turns to settle, sentinel-like, facing the tree line of the forest-sea. I turn my own eyes toward it as well, while