on the main body of the machine, her arms braced on an upper strut that bent like a bird’s furled wing. A ripple went through the little woman, fast and almost imperceptible, and the device squeaked and jittered suddenly under her before lapsing back into inscrutability.
“They are good healers,” the Elanaite said. “They can give a man back his legs when a rockslide makes them useless pulps of bone splinters or give a barren woman a child.” Her tone, grave and enigmatic, became suddenly glib. “Why, if you ask nicely, they could likely file down that fearsome smile, round your silly ears and tint you an acceptable color.” The last was delivered with a sly but forced grin.
Kimber’s hands fluttered to her chest, to the scar that was no longer hidden by the remnants of the uniform she wore. She wondered if the healers could fix it. A shiver of cold dread clutched at her chest and she quickly pulled her hands away.
Desperately wanting to hold tightly to the sudden light atmosphere between them, Kimber raised her chin with mock imperiousness. “I have become quite partial to my current hue,” she said, flashing the same derided sharp-toothed smile.
“Merely an example of their expertise,” Cho assured her, slipping down from her spot and into a hollow section that sported a crossbar and what looked like a cushion.
The better mood made Kimber bold, for better or worse. “Cho, who are the people across the river?”
Seated on the cushion, the small woman could not quite reach the crossbar. She scooted forward, but it remained outside her reach. “Ask me last year,” she sighed.
“I don’t understand.”
“Last year it would have been easier. Before the Day of the Dead, they were not people and they still may not be but I cannot be sure.”
“I still don’t understand.” It was beginning to feel like a mantra, though not a particularly illuminating one.
Cho gave up and slid down between joints attached to the body of the device, her legs still swinging off the ground. “When the Faer moved to the cities, others moved into their homes in the North Wall caves.”
“Maybe they know how to cross the river.”
“We cannot talk to them,” Cho told her.
“Why not?” Kimber asked. Even a swim would be better than a trek into a crowd of Maan, however peace-loving they might be. After all, how much wetter could they possibly get?
“Because they are natural to the World and thus, they do not speak.”
The things in the trees. The horrid things that wanted her to forsake clothing and the earth and go with them into a silent place. Terrible creatures with her face and features, pulling her up into the trees.
Kimber swatted away the intrusive foliage-rustled thoughts.
Cho gazed at her from between two thick support struts. “They are the red rel, not your kind. Not your…people.” The last word stuck and had to be rung out. “Do they call to you?”
Kimber listened. Only the storm spoke. “No,” she said. “No, they don’t speak to me either.”
Tension bled out of the little bunker, again leading Kimber to loquaciousness. “Why did the Faer leave the caves? They seemed so happy in the Tale.”
So happy, flitting back and forth along the worn trails, fishing and digging up the gifts of the Twins. Some stood by the shore, letting wind pick up tiny sails on strings and toss them in frantic circles in the sky while the children squealed gaily in the late noons sunshine. The glassy calm of this river broke only as swimmers surfaced and split where men sat on wooden boards, pulled along by tight reed cloths that captured the funneled breeze.
Within the scene, no one paid Kimber any attention, too contented in their lives. Kimber could not quite make out their features or their colors, just the general shape of men, women, and children hard at play. But far from the others, set apart by attitude and the other valleymen’s ungenerous glances, a little girl sat at the foot of the cliff. The girl seemed fuzzy, difficult to see within the scene, but she seemed to be staring back at Kimber.
She waved to the little girl and the figure waved back in a slow, dolorous fashion.
“Big Valley was beset by disaster.”
The Faer fled in panic as the scene became chaos, but Kimber could not yet tell what terror had befallen them.
“Life was so easy that there were too many children. The Faer began to starve and they dirtied Big River. There was a flood and the south wall collapsed into the vale.”
Children wept over the bones of their mothers and men choked on black water. The World was beset by the constant skyclap clash of a falling mountain that swept and rolled everything in an undertow of shattered rock. But the little girl, glowingly pale against the backdrop of mud and roiling stone, stood in the midst of it, untouched and still waving.
Somewhere in the bunker, Cho was fussing with the joints of the device. The sound floated up to Kimber and she grabbed hold of it, preparation for a quick escape.
“A wise woman led them to build the suspended cities. They cull fish from the river and string great hanging fields like the water nets the Bashrai use. When I was young, my mother’s brother told me that he had even seen them fly from one city to the other on great white wings and never touch the ground.”
Big Valley was restored to lushness though the ground remained uneven and rolling. Above, the heavens filled with soaring ashen figures winging through the azure expanse. Eyes watched from the far cliffside, furtive and hidden, different but familiar. And still, the little girl remained and still she waved.
“You will most definitely visit their physicians. You’ve gone whiter than basalt.”
Kimber blinked and found her way back into the dugout. Her breath blew out of her as though she’d been holding it captive.
A black eye stared at Kimber from between the joints and under a cocked brow. “It’s even said the Heaven Walker taught them how to steer the lost off Hebree’s path.”
“Bring back the dead?”
“I have heard Tales of it. It must be true.”
“Maybe someone made it up.”
This laugh was short and even harder than before, as sharp as the crack of the storm. “What makes you think that matters?”
The sky lit again in dramatic accompaniment, tossing light but also throwing a shadow across them. For just a moment, a sparking sensation assailed Kimber, like a thousand upon a thousand tiny insects landing on her skin and instantly taking off again in a flutter of wings and tiny prickling feet. Cho’s view was blocked by the bulk of the device but Kimber faced the bunker opening and the shade that lingered there.
“You must leave,” said the spectre.
It was neither spirit nor demon. Just a boy.
Against the backdrop of black clouds, the boy glowed. He was not simply pale, not like the Bashrai nor even like Kimber herself, but purely white, from his hair to his short robe and calf-pants. Even his eyes were such a pale shade of blue
