Arwa watched his shadow grow closer. As he drew near her, the liquid blur of him solidified. There was a moment when the air seemed to—rip—and then Zahir was through the storm, holding a hand out to her, his gaze clear in a face of hewn glass. He was unworldly and strange, roots wound about his arms, and yet the most familiar thing she had seen so far. She took his hand without complaint, and if she gripped him far too tight, he was kind enough not to say so.
“Thank you,” he said, exhaling as her grip tightened. Perhaps he, too, was grateful for the familiar.
He looked around, the facets of his face—sharp as mirror-glass—narrowing with consideration.
“If you enter the realm naturally, you can only walk your own path. Mystical orders used to enter the realm together in order to allow exploration of a richer landscape than offered by their own blood. This storm is part of your path. Your realm of ash, shaped by your own dreams and those of your ancestors. My path is—rather different.”
“If you must seek the Maha, then I imagine you need to return to it,” said Arwa.
She did not say,Please don’t leave me here.She was no green girl, to be afraid of the howling of her own heart. But when he said, “Come with me,” she was relieved regardless.
“Tell me what to be aware of,” she said. “My lord, now would be an ideal time to give your guidance context.”
“We will be moving farther and farther from the mortal realm,” he said promptly. “Losing your grip upon your roots means you may lose yourself here. But—you’re familiar with grave-tokens? The weaving of them?”
“Yes.”
“When you wind the green together, you gain a stronger material. When you wind blood roots together, mine to yours, they hold you faster to your flesh.”
Her distant lungs inhaled. Exhaled.
“Show me,” she said.
His hand moved around her own.
As she watched, their roots coiled together about their joined hands. Winding into a whole, like coils of rope or strands of vegetation lashed together to make a stronger whole. Just as he’d told her.
She did not ask him what greater numbers provided protection from. Howling, strange, laden with the dead—a better question would have been to ask whatwassafe within this realm. Instead she said, “Show me the way, my lord. I am your obedient apprentice.”
They walked. She felt a moment of dizziness, as if her roots were trying to hold her fast. She felt the tug of another time and place: of lungs rising and falling, of a heart racing. Her body. That was her body.
Abruptly the storm faded. They were beyond the barrier that had previously separated their paths. Here, trees rose around the both of them. Great leaves the color of bird wings; ashen roots and trees, tangling with the ruby gleam of his own roots.
Arwa looked back. Her roots formed an equally tangled path behind her. Body and soul still bound together. She shuddered again, and looked away.
He was looking at her.
“I would like to continue, Lady Arwa.” There was hesitation in his voice, in the clouded marble of his eyes. “But if you wish to turn back, try again on another occasion…”
Arwa shook her head. She did not allow herself to think of an alternative. To consider fear, when adventure lay before her.
“Although I wish you hadwarnedme, my lord, I want to continue.”
He nodded.
“Don’t let go,” he said. “Please.”
“I won’t,” she told him.
They walked farther. There was no sound but their own voices. Not even breath. Where her—path, he had called it—had been all wildness and fury, his was a deathly place, thick with its own growth and silence. In slivers, she saw more trees hidden by the skeletons of the closest: great old banyans, peepal and ashoka, all of them ink dark, incongruously entwined. And between them…
People, she thought.Those are people.
She stumbled, and felt her heart again, a dreamlike flutter. He gripped her hand tighter.
“What happened?” he asked, eyes wide.
It was only then—curse it—that she realized he was meeting her eyes. That he was looking at her bare of any veil—bare of even the protective carapace of her own body. If she looked anything like he did, she resembled herself, but was more glass than woman, more shadow and marble than skin. Still, it was not to be borne.
