Everything gone. Everything dark for a moment. She heard the sound of wind, raging like a storm, and heard the endless, echoing voice:
“Rui Misosazai,” they said. “You will die in one hundred days.”
The darkness turned solid. It turned into a shroud. The giant tree-creature folded around itself, roots pulling up from the ground and coiling around her body, until the god shifted into the web of trees again and was gone, leaving Rui gasping for air, on her knees, and clutching her heart.
“Rui!” Sen cried. “What happened – what did it do?”
Rui’s voice scraped, raw. Her vision fluttered. “Rui!” He seemed so far away. “Rui, hang on… hang on, I’m taking you to Jobo…”
After that, there was nothing.
She stumbled to the earth. She thought she saw someone coming toward her. Somewhere, far off, she thought she heard another bell.
Then she fell again, and the world slipped into a warm, blanketed darkness, a great soothing river that enveloped her completely, lifted her from the dirt, and carried her away.
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
Sen
Time moves so quickly, Sen thought.It gets the better of us all.
Rui, pale and feverish, had been adamant that she was fine. “Just shaken,” she’d told them, only to collapse into his arms.
“Hurry,” Jobo said. “We must get her to the village.”
They saw the signal fires on the path; Jobo tensed, as if struck. “So it’s started already,” he muttered. “Hurry!”
I thought I would have time to learn, Sen thought. I thought there would be time to make a choice.But now?
Now there were no choices. Now there was only the ring of fire at the edge of sight, the tinge of smoke in the air, the remnants of that strange attack, the woods themselves that had seemed to turn against them, growing sour, and darker than any Sen had ever seen; now there was the fear in his teacher’s eyes, and the pale shuddering fever of a god’s curse in Rui’s veins.
They went to the outvillage, to old Chie’s hut, with her unsown garden, brittle in the cold, and as evening came over the edge of Kitaiji-on-the-hill, splitting air and scudding down with rain, a wind came with it; a commotion, a blur in the west. Old Goro moved his aching limbs to claw some remedies from an ancient chest and Chie brought the fire back to life. Rui shook, sweating, grasping at the lily-seed darkness beyond the fields.
“What’s happening to her?”
Chie shook her head. “No one can know. If it was the gods…”
Outside, the bells were ringing. Something had happened at the fortress.
No time.
Sen had frozen at the sight of the god, the impenetrable wall of being that engulfed them. He’d drawn his sword. He thought it was a demon.
And now, Rui had saved him again.
He found himself muttering, “Rui, you’re not going anywhere. Jobo’s going to help you…” She shivered in his arms. “We have todosomething.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Jobo, “but this may be beyond my ability to heal.”
Rui cried out. Sen held her hand. “It’s all right… We’re here, don’t worry, you’re safe.”
There was a commotion from the road.
He looked out.Safe?What world could be safe?Now that the war of his father had returned. Now that the refuge his mother gave him was under threat. Now that he’d met a warrior who said,Sen, I am your cousin, I am here to bring you home.
Was this not his home? Or had it ever been?
What safety was there in a world at war? What safety was there, when the capital made their threats? His stewardmother’s peace was unlikely to hold, not unless she acquiesced. Not unless she increased her tribute. Unless she said,I am one of you, I assimilate, I am Iteki no more.Unless she gave them what remained of her – of their – last freedom.
