The girl led me through a forest unlike any I had ever seen. Bright golden fruit peered out between leaves of deepest emerald green, and birds with cerulean feathers called out to each other from the tops of tall trees. A scarlet lizard, a tiny cousin of the fire-breathing salamander I had fought in the arena of Phyreios, skittered across the narrow footpath.
I asked the girl her name, and between bites of the pastry with which the captain had bribed her, she told me it was Kala. She was handmaiden to the grandmothers—a position of great honor, I inferred, especially for one so young.
Our path sloped upward, toward the mountain at the island’s center. The only clouds on that bright blue morning ringed the black peak like a crown. Though the earth did not tremble and the mountain was still, it was a volcano, no less mighty than the ones that sprang forth in fire and steam from the sea in my homeland.
At the base of the mountain stood a tiny village: five small huts built upon stilts in the sandy clearing, with roofs of grass and leaves, clustered in a half-circle around an edifice of volcanic stone. Three old women in long, woven skirts, their hair snow-white and braided with beads of wood and shell, gathered around a cooking fire.
“Grandmother, the pirate is here again,” Kala said, to announce our arrival.
The first woman looked up from the fishing net she was repairing, setting down her needle. “Well, did you tell him to leave?”
“I did,” Kala said, “but he’s still here.”
“That’s because you took his pastries, dear,” said the woman beside the cooking pot.
Kala wiped scarlet jam from her face with one hand, succeeding only in smearing it further.
“Run along and tell him that if he wants to hide his ill-gotten gains on our island, he has to pay us,” the first grandmother said. “Now. Who is this that you’ve brought to us?”
She stood and approached me. Her skin was a weathered brown, her eyes sharp and discerning. Once-black ink, turned a coppery green, covered her exposed arms in a pattern of waves and winding currents. The image of a shark, huge-bellied and ancient, stared at me from her left shoulder.
I bowed, my hands at my sides and my back straight, as I had been taught to do at the temple. It seemed the correct thing to do; I had been a child when I had last visited a wise woman, but I knew I stood before three figures who deserved the utmost respect. I wanted them to find me worthy.
“My name is Eske,” I said. “I have traveled a very long way to see you. The dragon of the temple sent me here—she said you could help me to save someone I love.”
“Ah, and how is the Lady Dragon these days?” the woman asked.
“She is well,” I answered.
The woman nodded. “Good, good. It has been some time since we have seen her. You’re just in time for breakfast, young man, and then we can speak about your errand.”
I sat down on a flat stone beside the fire, and Kala ran off into the forest again. She returned with the captain—the pirate—in tow, helping to carry his chest of stolen treasure. The grandmothers negotiated with amused smiles on their faces, and he handed them a sack of coins, bowing with a sweep of his plumed hat.
To me, he said something about a beach, and drinking, and gestured to the west. I promised I would find him later, and hoped that he understood enough not to leave without me for at least a few days. I had no other means of transport off this island.
I ate a strange but satisfying dish of fish and fruit, tart and savory and sweet as honey all at once, and drank tea as red as fine wine. The first of the grandmothers sat down beside me, and the others returned to their tasks. All three observed me. Kala did as well, as she hung the fish she had collected from a line strung between one hut and a nearby tree.
“You are welcome to Ashinya, Eske,” the woman beside me said, “and to Ewandar, the isle of the priestesses. My name is Luana, and I have been serving here for ten years.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For the welcome and the meal. It has been a long road to get here.”
Luana nodded. “It is not often we receive visitors. If the Lady Dragon sent you to us, we will do what we can to help you.”
“If there is anything I can offer in exchange, it is yours,” I said.
“That is kind of you. There are a few tasks for which we could use a strapping young man, but we will discuss that later. First: where do you come from? Who is your father, and your mother?”
These questions had little to do with my quest, but I would answer them truthfully for the listening priestesses. I suspected they would be able to tell if I lied. “I come from a land far, far to the north. I once thought that I had reached the southernmost parts of the world, only to find that there was yet more world to see. My father is Ivor, chieftain of the Clan of the Bear. My mother…” There was an old wound. My words tangled in my throat, and I could not look up at Luana as I continued. “My mother is Amaruq of the seal people. My father won her respect and her hand through a great feat of heroism, and lost both before I came of age. She returned to her family many years ago.”
I felt the weight of the priestesses’ gaze. I was being measured, and I carried too much guilt—for my mother, whom I could not defend, and my young sister, whom I abandoned; Fearghus, lost at sea for my own foolishness, and Khalim. Surely they could see it, and they would tell me I was too heavy with it to proceed. Even the gaze of the dragon had not cut so deeply.
Luana folded her weathered hands in her lap. Her face held only a slight, sad smile. “And where is your home, dear?”
I took a breath and squared my shoulders in an effort to project confidence that I did not feel. “I can tell you about the land where I was born, but—”
“That is not what I asked.”
I had thought as much. A salt-scented wind came in from the beach, stirring the trees and rustling the thatched roofs. It reminded me of my father’s longhouse, perched upon the sheer gray cliff, with its stout walls and roaring central fire. Smoke would pour from the chimney and mix with the smell of the ocean and the bite of the coming frost. That smell was home—looking out over the sea with Fearghus beside me, claiming a moment of quiet as our feasting kin sang through the evening.
Home was also the iron-rich mountain outside of Phyreios, in the fortress hidden from the eyes of the city. Khalim and I had shared a tent beside the stable. I still kept the canvas, though I no longer used it. The charcoal figures we had drawn on the inside were all I had left of him, and they faded with each passing day and each change of the weather.
Even if I returned to my father’s hall, even if I journeyed back to Phyreios, I would not find home again. I could wander for a lifetime, a hundred lifetimes, and still it would remain beyond my reach.
Luana accepted my prolonged silence with a calm smile. She nodded to Kala, who brought me a second cup of the strange red tea.
I accepted it and held the clay cup in both hands, tracing my thumbs over the pattern of ochre squares etched into the sides. “I think I have no home,” I said at last. “Not in this world.”
“Then that is why you have come,” Luana said. “You wish to look through the Dreaming Eye, and find it in the next.”
I set the teacup aside, carving a small circle into the sand where it rested without tipping. “Yes. I mean to cross over, and to retrieve the soul of someone that I love. His body was taken from him. It is my hope that the artifact you protect will show me the way.”
Luana’s smile vanished. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other two women put down their nets and lift their eyes to me.
“Oh, dear boy,” Luana said softly. “What’s dead should stay dead. I know Lady Dragon and her monks must have told you that already, but I will say it again.”
“He did not die,” I argued. “His body still lives—his god dwells in it now, after sending him to the world beyond.”
Luana shook her head, sunlight shimmering over her snowy hair. “I don’t see how it makes any difference.” Her voice was gentle, and her smile returned, soft and maternal, but the words still cut deeply.
“Khalim loved his god. He trusted him, he spent his entire life serving him, and for his faithfulness he was banished from the world while that god uses his hands and feet to rebuild a city without him. It does make a difference. I intend to set it right.” I got up from my seat and knelt in the sand at the priestess’s feet. “I have already spent a year and two seasons on my quest. I will spend a lifetime, if I need to, but I need your help.”
Her weathered hand on my cheek was cool, her touch gentle. “You are very young, Eske,” she said. “A lifetime is both longer than you can imagine and shorter than you will believe, when you are as old as I. There are other young men who could love you, and in the meantime, there are fields to be planted, fish to be caught, sea-ways to be plotted, and children to be cared for. There may be ways for you to cross over and carry your body with you, but those ways are hidden from us for a reason.”
“Who is to say that, had he lived,” another of the priestesses said, “you and your Khalim would not have grown apart? I myself buried one husband and bade farewell to the second, when I came to Ewandar. It is the way of things.”
It was a possibility I had not considered. I had not known him for so long a time before he was taken from me. “That may be so,” I admitted. “But I will not make that choice for him. If he tells me that he wishes to go on without me, then so be it.” Each word was as heavy as iron passing from my mouth, and I shivered despite the sun’s warmth. I still imagined a life in which Khalim and I would once again be together, at the end of my long journey, but I would not be like the First Hero, denying Khalim the freedom of his own will. In the arrogance of youth, I believed my love was greater than that of a god.
I am not certain I was wrong.
“But I must find him, first,” I said.
Luana stood, and she took my hand and guided me to my feet. “Very well,” she said. “Understand this: we cannot help you to cross over. That knowledge is not ours to keep. But we will prepare the ritual, and you will look into the Dreaming Eye, and you will see what you shall see.”
She had found me worthy. I took her hand in both of mine and bowed, pressing her hand to my brow. “Thank you. I will forever be in your debt.”
“Preparations will take some time,” said the second priestess. “You must be patient, and perform the deeds that we ask of you, before you can undergo the ritual.”
I straightened and released Luana’s hand. “I am ready.”
Back to Interlude One: Citadel Gate
Forward to Chapter VII: The Slope of Ewandar
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