The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021

KATE ELLIOTT The Long Walk

Her husband died in the night after a long illness. Asvi slept through it, exhausted by two years of his decline into wasted helplessness. Waking, she knew at once he had breathed his last. The bedchamber, with its curtained bed and painted wardrobes, felt one soul emptier, flown to the mountains of everlasting morning.

She didn’t touch him, just swung her legs off the bed and got to her feet. Her body ached the way it always did now in the morning. She shuffled over to the closed window, feeling an almost choking need for fresh air despite the bundles of herbs hanging from the rafters to sweeten the smell of dying.

As she opened the shutters, she lifted her eyes to the horizon with a sense of relief. He’d been a good enough man, as men went. She’d been fortunate her father had arranged a match for her with a man who wasn’t ruled by his temper, although more likely that had been an accident. Her father’s main concern had been sealing an alliance that would worm him securely into the wool trade. Her husband had not complained much, had hit her only twice and even apologized for it once, and had generously allowed her to hire a second maid for the kitchen as she got older.

Dawn spilled light over a cloudless sky. The eastern mountains rose stark in the distance. She stood gazing at them for far longer than she usually had a chance to do. For the first time in her entire married life she had no one she had to tend to, no porridge to cook at dawn and meals to prepare for later, no child’s clothing to mend that had gotten torn the day before, no invalid’s bedpan to empty. No reason she was required to turn away from the splendid vista that had hung beyond her reach for her entire life.

Sparks drew long to become dancing threads of gold and silver and bronze. The dragons were flying over the peaks and spires of the Great Divide, as they did at dawn and dusk, too big not to see and too far away to see properly. But they were always magnificent and deadly. Like the eastern massif, they were a barrier no one could cross.

The latch of the bedchamber door rattled softly before the door cracked open.

Feloa spoke in a whisper. “Mistress? Are you awake? Your son is concerned because you’re not in the kitchen yet.”

Asvi turned as the door opened farther on well-oiled hinges. An older woman took a step into the room. She was dressed in a drab gray-green skirt with a work apron tied over a faded blouse.

“He’s dead,” Asvi said.

“Ah.” Feloa’s gaze flashed toward the bed, whose curtains were tied back for the summer months. The shape lay under the blanket like the topography of a broken hill. A white sleeping cap hugged the unmoving head. “Shall I tell your son? He is the master now.”

A great lethargy settled on Asvi. Even to think of dressing seemed as impossible as climbing the eastern mountains to look over the wilderness of demons said to lie beyond the stony peaks.

Feloa’s eyes widened. “Mistress, you must sit down.”

She steered Asvi to the dressing table and its birch-back chair. Asvi sat obediently. The mirror was shrouded, since vanity could never be tolerated in a house where the master was dying.

“Stay there, mistress.”

Feloa walked to the bed and held the bedside glass with its water over the dead man’s nose and slightly parted lips, now tinged blue-gray. When it was clear he was no longer breathing, she set down the glass and went out. Asvi heard her descending the stairs, heard voices in the entry, heard the front door close. Maybe she dozed, because the next thing she knew, Feloa was back.

“He’s gone to the temple, mistress. Let me help you dress before he returns with the priest-magistrate.”

Asvi pressed a hand against Feloa’s sleeve. Words welled up from an urgent spring.

“Feloa, I won’t let them cast you out to take the long walk.”

Her lower lip trembling was the only visible sign of emotion Feloa allowed herself. “Mistress, you have always been kinder to me than I deserve.”

“Have I?” Asvi muttered as an utterly unanticipated anger boiled up from her gut in response to Feloa’s submissive words.

A surge of energy agitated her. She had to get out of this room or she’d suffocate. Maybe she’d already suffocated and these last years had been her wandering in the desert of perdition that was the only fitting reward for unfilial sons and disobedient women.

She stalked to the wardrobe to fetch the brown mourning dress every bride was given on her wedding day, to be worn at the death rites of men. Brown was the color of widows and fatherless girls. In the ancient days of old, when the people had lived in a far-off land, before they’d boldly journeyed to these shores, any woman obstreperous enough to outlive her husband would be buried with him. From earth, into earth, so it was proclaimed at the temple on every Twelfth Day as a reminder of the way people had once lived more purely and closer to the gods. The temple was more merciful now. And there were the dragons to think of. The dragons to assuage.

But of course she was safe from that. She had sons.

After unfolding the dress, she pulled it on over her shift, needing Feloa’s help to do up the back buttons. Women like Feloa had to make do with front-buttoned mourning dresses. For all that he poured his profits straight back into the business and never into fripperies or conveniences for his household, her husband had insisted on certain niceties for his wife that would be visible to others.

Feloa shadowed her downstairs and into the kitchen, where Bavira had already folded up her sleeping pallet and stoked the fire.

“You sit down, mistress,” the girl said. “I’ll make the porridge.”

Since her husband was no longer alive to complain if his morning porridge hadn’t been made by his dutiful wife’s hands, Asvi sat. But it chafed her to sit. Her mind was filled with fog, and yet her body was restless.

She rose. People would come to pay their respects. They had to be fed: ginger pancakes, buns filled with red bean paste, fruit tarts, spicy meat paste, flat loaves of faring bread baked with salty cheese because it was the traditional food of travelers. She would add sage and parsley to give the bread a more pleasing flavor.

She pulled on her kitchen apron and by rote began assembling the ingredients she’d need. Just two months ago she’d brought a tray of one hundred folded pancakes filled with sweet cream and early-season berries to the memorial of her last uncle, youngest of a gaggle of brothers.

“Mistress, you should rest,” objected Bavira anxiously from where she stood by the porridge pot.

Feloa said, “Let her be. The work comforts her. She likes it best in the kitchen.”

It was true enough. Meklos could have hired a cook, but he preferred to be seen as a man so successful that his wife would never allow another woman’s hands to make food for him. Since it was bad luck for a husband to set foot in a wife’s kitchen, the kitchen had become her treasured domain. Her whole heart and attention could fall into the food. Batter to be mixed. Dough to be rolled out and braided. Rosebud cakes to be decorated. Savory pinwheels to be rolled up, sliced, and baked.

“Mother! What are you doing?”

Her eldest son appeared in the kitchen doorway. When little, Elilas and his brothers had spent plenty of time in the kitchen with her, but now that he would inherit the headship of the house, he hesitated, not wanting to bring ill luck to the home he’d lived in his whole life. His wife, Danis, pushed past him, easy with him as Asvi had never been with her own husband.

“Your mother wants everything done right with the food, just as she always has,” Danis said, coming to the table where Asvi was kneading dough. “Dear Mother, I am sorry to interrupt you. The priest-magistrate has come. You must attend him in the parlor for the ceremony of crossing.”

Asvi’s hands stilled, fingers laced through the comforting texture of dough.

“Oh,” she said in a low voice.

“I’ve sent a servant to the tea shop for a full tray, but you should have been in the parlor to greet him,” said Elilas with his usual hint of impatience.

Feloa had been making pancakes. She took the pan off the top of the stove and came over to the table with a damp cloth to pat flour off of Asvi’s face and wipe her hands clean. “I’ll finish the kneading, mistress.”

The ceremony had to follow its proper course.

Asvi took off her apron, then paused at the door. “Do the pancakes first. Bavira, bring the last tray of sesame dumplings for the priest.”

“Mother! He’s waiting!”

The parlor was a formal room used only for entertaining visitors and decorated to impress with lacquered chairs, embroidered couches, a polished side table, and a glass-fronted cupboard to display the delicate cups and saucers used for important guests. The priest-magistrate was standing with hands folded behind his back, studying her husband’s collection of precious demon eyes, hard gleaming spheres like gemstones. To hold one in your hand could kill you, but each of these was encased in a net of silver thread to confine and dampen its toxic magic.

“Your Honor,” said her son.

The man’s cold and forbidding presence was leavened by a warm baritone voice. “Widow Meklos, may you follow your husband in peace as you followed your father in obedience and follow after your sons with a nurturing heart to care for their needs.”

She inclined her head, glad she did not have to speak. What was there to say? The words were part of the rite once used in the old country when a widow was drugged and buried alongside her dead husband. Who was a woman, after all, except through the men who recognized her as part of their lives? Asvi, daughter of Hinan. Asvi, sister of Astyan, Nerlas, Tohilos, Elyan, and Belek. Asvi, wife of Meklos. Asvi, mother of Elilas, Vesterilos, and Posyon.

The priest went upstairs with her son to examine the body. Once he was out of the parlor, she went to the cupboard and took out cups for the men.

Danis came in, carrying the tray of sesame dumplings. “Dear Mother, will you not sit down? I’ll set out the tea things . . . ah, here is the tea.”

A servant hurried in carrying a covered tray, which he set down on the side table next to the dumplings.

“Thank you, Herel,” Danis said graciously.

He touched fingers to his forehead, ear, and heart, and left the parlor. With the practiced movements of a woman who has had the leisure, as a girl, to learn such niceties, Danis set the cups on saucers and the saucers on a tray painted with flowers. Then she tipped the lid of the heavy teapot just enough to inhale the scent with a satisfied nod.

“Feloa will bring up hot pancakes when they return, but don’t expect the priest-magistrate to eat any,” Danis went on, watching Asvi with a wary eye as if expecting her to collapse at any instant. “We can eat them once he’s gone. We’re not required to starve!”

“Will you promise to keep Feloa on, Danis?” said Asvi in a low voice.

“Keep her on?”

“Households often turn out older women who are servants and hire in younger ones.”

“Such a course is advised as a matter of economy. A younger worker can get more done. An older worker should return to her family to rest.”

“She has no male kin. She was never able to marry and have sons. She’s served me well all these years. I would not want to see her forced—” The thought caught in her throat like a bone that could not be swallowed.

Danis nodded with a sober expression, never one to pretend she did not understand an uncomfortable truth. “You want me to promise we will not turn her out and force her to take the long walk.”

Asvi swayed, grasped the nearest chair, and sat. A sweat broke out down her spine, as if she were sitting with her back to a hot fire.

Danis sat next to her, taking hold of both her hands. “Father Meklos did well. His sons are good stewards of the business. We can keep her on.”

“Even if she grows too old to do much work?”

“She’s a good cook, better than me. Cooks can work a long time. Elilas does not care if his meals come from his wife’s hands. Nor do I! Did you never tire of cooking, Dear Mother?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I like the kitchen. Nothing ever turns out quite the same two days in a row. And there’s no one looking over your shoulder if you want to try something new. You won’t keep me out of the kitchen, will you?”

Danis smiled sadly. “Dear Mother, everyone in this household knows we are blessed with the food you make for us. Once the rites are finalized and Father Meklos is buried, we’ll move you into that nice room in the back that looks over the garden. That way there are no stairs for you to climb. You can easily go to the kitchen whenever you want.”

“I can’t see the mountains from there.”

“Of course not. That will be a comfort, won’t it? Imagine waking up every morning to see the eastern peaks. Then you never have to think about dragons hunting and demons clawing their way along the ground through the poisonous fog.” She shuddered theatrically.

“Won’t Elilas take that bedroom?” For generations the tower room had been the bedchamber for the head of the household.

“No. I don’t want to sleep there. We’re going to turn it into a schoolroom for the children. I feel sure the sight of the mountains will scare them into concentrating on their studies. Elilas and I will stay in the chamber we have now. It’s small but I like it. I’ve convinced him to extend it with a sitting room and courtyard so I can invite over my friends.” She squeezed Asvi’s fingers. “You can sit with us, of course. We embroider, and read aloud last season’s plays and all the most current poets.”

Asvi had never had the chance to learn to embroider, only to mend. Her father hadn’t wasted any money educating his daughter, although her brothers had taught her the letters. She tried to imagine Danis’s elegant sitting room and her fashionable friends quoting plays and practicing dance steps, but it was a room she viewed from afar, not a place she could inhabit.

“Oh, dear.” Danis released her. “I’m talking too much, and you’re the one grieved, Dear Mother. Not that I’m not grieved as well,” she added, too quickly. “But Father Meklos was so ill and in so much pain, I can’t help but be relieved he’s shed of it. His illness exhausted you. Maybe you can rest now.”

What was rest, if not death? Rest didn’t sound at all appealing, any more than did a tidy room overlooking the garden walls.

Footsteps sounded in the passage outside, brisk and demanding. The men had returned.

Elilas helped her stand and held on to her arm a bit too tightly, so she couldn’t go to the tea tray, as if he thought she didn’t understand how things had changed in the house. Instead, Danis poured with a skill Asvi admired, giving a rhythm to the pattern of warming the cups with hot water, emptying out, and pouring in the amber-colored tea in a perfectly curved stream. So graceful. So beautiful. Like Danis herself, a prize on the marriage market the year Elilas had convinced his father to pay her staggering bride price by explaining how such a bride would enhance the household’s status in the wool trade.

Asvi recalled the first time she had poured tea in the place of her husband’s father’s wife, after the old man’s death. Her hands had shaken so badly she’d spilled, and then spilled again at hearing the disapproving hiss made by Meklos’s mother. Ever after, she’d dreaded visitors for fear of disappointing his mother or him. Danis’s confidence felt not like a slap at her own incompetence but instead like a long-sought escape. Elilas’s proud smile toward his lovely wife was echoed by the priest-magistrate’s appreciative nod.

Danis served the men first and afterward brought a cup to Asvi and sat beside her. The magistrate sipped; Elilas sipped; the women sipped.

Once the magistrate had finished his first cup and allowed Danis to pour him a second, he began.

“I will send over the acolytes to take the body to the temple for preparation. Because it is high summer, the crossing ceremony must be held tomorrow instead of after the traditional five days of reflection. You have brothers, do you not, Headman Elilas?”

“Two still living. One is in the militia, stationed at Fellspire Pass.”

“Courage to him,” said the magistrate. “A brave sword who through his sacrifice secures peace for us all.”

Asvi squeezed her hands together, thinking of gentle Posyon and how he’d comforted her when she wept to see him sent off to the frontier from which there could be no return. But she said nothing. It was not her place to speak.

“The other supervises our warehouse in Farport.”

“So too far to return for the ceremonies in time. Very well. You can send him the proper offerings to make.” The man turned his cool gaze on Asvi, measuring her and, she was sure, finding her wanting. Her father had been a sheepherder who sought a better market for his wool. His child wasn’t worth much on the marriage market, but she’d been sixteen and a good cook even then. For ambitious Meklos, who revered his distinguished mother, the monopoly on her father’s excellent wool and connections into sheepherding clans farther up in the foothills was the bargain he’d been after. He’d doubled his family’s business on the strength of it.

“You’ll pay the walk tithe for your mother, I presume?” the magistrate added, lifting an eyebrow in query. “We discussed the amount upstairs.”

Elilas’s hesitation startled her. She looked up to find him staring meaningfully at Danis. “It’s higher than I expected,” he mumbled.

Danis gave Elilas a scalding, scolding look and expelled a huff of exasperated breath, enough to make him grimace.

He said, “But of course the family will pay it, Your Honor.”

“Let’s settle it now, then, rather than wait for tomorrow. I find it’s easier that way.”

“If you’ll accompany me to my father’s office.”

“Your office now, Headman.”

“Yes, of course. If you’ll accompany me to my office.”

The men went out. Danis set down her cup so hard the impact chipped its base. She glowered at the cup, painted with miniature scenes of women walking nobly into the dagger-toothed maws of massive dragons. “These are so dreadfully old-fashioned. I’ll replace them all.”

“But they’ve been in the family for generations,” said Asvi in surprise. “They were purchased from the temple.”

“Yes, I can tell. I can get a good price for them in the market, unless you want them, Dear Mother.”

“Why would I want them?” Asvi muttered.

“Why, indeed! You have good taste, not that the old man ever let you have your way in clothing or decoration. No wonder you like the kitchen. It’s the only place he never interfered with you.”

Asvi did not know what to say in answer to this plain speaking, so she said nothing. Saying nothing was always safest.

Danis rose. “I’d best go look in on the men or that thieving priest will squeeze another hundred out of our treasury. Eli is a canny trader, but he’s so unbelievably naive when it comes to the temple. My father says—”

She broke off and leveled a hard look at Asvi, then smiled as one might at a well-loved but rather simple child. “Never mind. It’s been a difficult time for all of us. I blow hot and cold and can’t hold my tongue. Dear Mother, forgive me.”

“You’ve always been kind to me, Danis.”

Danis bent to give her a kiss on each cheek. “You welcomed me when most humbly born mothers would have set themselves against a woman of my exalted background coming into their life. For your modesty and graciousness I will always be grateful.”

She went out.

To sit in the empty parlor was a luxury Asvi had rarely experienced. She savored it now, knowing it would not last long. The demon eyes stared at her from the glass cupboard. People said their eyes never stopped seeing, even when they were dead, not once they had been wakened by a glimpse of prey. The eyes were Meklos’s pride and glory. People respected him for having the courage to keep such a collection within his own house. He had liked to handle them while wearing gloves, entertaining visitors with ghastly descriptions of how each had been acquired. The physic who had treated him over the last two years had informed the dying man that he’d been poisoned by handling the eyes. Yet toward the end Meklos had whispered, in a tone of thick and almost erotic passion, that even so, this withering and painful decline had been worth it, to have seen what he had seen. These claims were nothing more than the ravings of a dying man, the physic had explained to her, and Meklos had never described his visions.

She never touched the eyes. Once, as a girl, up in the foothills, she’d seen a living demon as it plunged in to attack a herd of sheep, its eyes blazing with a venomous light as an acrid, ashy mist poured from its upper mouth like spilled tea to scald and slay the terrified sheep as well as her favorite brother, boiled alive. Just as its blazing eyes saw her, just as it turned toward her to boil her, too, a dragon had come diving out of the clouds with no warning except a stinging pressure of hot wind. The great beast had marked her with a single, slow look, like honey oozing over a wound. But it didn’t care about her; she was nothing, just a human girl, of no more interest than the bleating sheep. It clamped its gleaming claws over the demon and carried it away into the heavens. If she’d had wings, she’d have flown after it right then, before the weight of the world trapped her on the dull earth.

Through the open door she heard Elilas make polite farewells to the magistrate. The front door closed, leaving the two in the entryway.

In a low voice, barely heard through the open door, Danis said to her husband, “They’re corrupt, the whole lot of them. He’ll pocket half and give the rest to the priest-adjudicator.”

“What can we do? They rule the prince, and the prince rules us.”

“We shall see.”

“Danis!”

“Shhh. You know I’m right. I can’t believe you hesitated like that. Your own mother!”

“It’s a lot of money, and she’s old.”

“ ‘She’s old!’ Is that what you’ll say about me someday?”

“You! Of course not. You’re—”

“I’m splendid and elegant and just disreputable enough to be respected by everyone, not mousy and browbeaten and obedient, and born in the foothills among the sheep, to boot! Your father was bad enough, treating her like a servant and never appreciating the inventive and delicious meals she cooked his whole life. Have you any idea what a treasure she is? I would trade any cook in this city for her. Even the prince’s cook. What do you think of that? And never a word of complaint about having to sleep in that horrible room up in the tower all these years next to the whining, selfish man who complained if she added any scrap of flavoring to his bland porridge.”

“Danis!”

“I’m just repeating your own words, darling. Don’t try to throw them back in my face. He browbeat you, too. No wonder your brothers fled as far away as they could go once they were of age. You’re just fortunate I took a liking to you.”

His voice softened to a teasing tone. “Why did you take a liking to me, my sweet?”

“That would be telling,” she said with a laugh. “Come now. Give your poor mother the bracelet before the magistrate decides to come back and squeeze more coin out of you. He saw your hesitation. You know what they say at the temple. Times are hard, and the dragons need offerings.”

“I would never!”

“You would never, right up until you would.”

“Vesti and Pos would never forgive me.”

“As well they should not. We would lose all face in the community if we let her be taken for the long walk. Did you even think of that?”

“Of course I wouldn’t let her be taken, my sweet. I was just shocked at how much he demanded.”

“Because he is ruled by greed and free to take what he wants because the prince protects the magistrates because they protect him. If we have a fourth boy, I’ll pledge him into the temple and with my tutoring he’ll shake things up!”

Elilas laughed nervously.

“Enough of this, darling,” Danis added. “It’s settled, and she’s safe. Let’s go back in.”

Their footsteps approached. Asvi folded her hands in her lap and said nothing as they came in. She liked for people to assume she was as hard of hearing as Meklos had been the last few years. Elilas entered the room and crossed to her. He stiffly held out a bracelet of polished obsidian and carnelian beads strung together on a silver chain.

“Your family vouches for you, Mother. With this tithe signified by this bracelet, we take on the responsibility of caring for you even though you can no longer bear sons and are too weak to ease the burdens men carry in this harsh world.”

A flash of ire twitched at the corner of Danis’s eyes as she gave a sardonic smile. But she said nothing and made no retort. What retort could there be?

In the entry hall, Herel began admitting visitors who’d come to pay their respects. The first were the neighbors along the street who had seen the magistrate arrive and depart. As word spread, more arrived. Bavira brought a tray of pancakes, quickly consumed, and Danis sent out to a bakery for five trays of rosebud cakes. It seemed blasphemous to Asvi to serve cakes bought at a shop to visitors in her own home. But she was just too tired, and anyway it was no longer her place. Danis would make such decisions from now on. A stronger mother-in-law would have ruled her son’s wife, as Asvi had been ruled for years, but no one ruled Danis. Asvi could not imagine even trying.

Her youngest brother arrived with a pair of actors in tow. While much of the family still lived and herded in the foothills, he was a city man now, a playwright educated with the money brought in by their new trading connections. The bright gold sash slimming his torso and his hair plaited to look like dragon scales gave him the flair of a man of fashion. He greeted Elilas first, of course, then lingered longer, speaking to Danis in bent-headed confidences, before coming over.

“You should do your hair differently, Asvi,” he said with a brotherly kiss to her cheek. “This style is so outdated and never suited you anyway. Let me see it.”

She gazed at him blankly, trying to sort out what “it” was. For an instant she could not even recall his name.

Belek! As a girl she’d had most of the household chores and the childminding to do, with her mother ill for long stretches after each of her pregnancies. Little Belek had just learned to walk when her father had taken her downslope to try his luck with her on the marriage market in the flatlands.

Belek took hold of her wrist and examined the bracelet. “Those are fine-quality beads. They’d have lost face if they’d not paid the tithe for you.”

“He’s my son!”

“Sons have discarded mothers before this. Or lost them through no fault of their own.”

They exchanged a look, for, however little they understood each other’s lives, they shared the knowledge of how their father had lost his own mother in this way, as he had reminded Asvi constantly as she grew into marriageable age. His father—​Asvi’s grandfather—​had died when her father was still a boy. He’d been the eldest of the surviving children and thus the one responsible, since, at sixteen, he was considered a man. His mother had no surviving brothers or father, and her male cousins lived too far away to care. When he hadn’t had enough to pay the tithe, his mother had been taken by the temple and sent up the long walk into the eastern mountains as an offering to the dragons, who were all that stood between the human settlements and the demons. He’d never seen his mother again, of course. He’d never forgiven himself for not being able to save her.

“I’d scrape together the money no matter how many loans I’d have to take out,” Belek added. “People like us can’t afford to be shamed as uncaring hill folk who chain their daughters to the cliffs for the dragons to take.”

“No one ever did that. Young women are far too valuable to throw away!” exclaimed Danis, gliding up beside him with a sly smirk on her bountiful red lips. “It’s just a story playwrights tell because nubile youth plays well on the stage.”

She solicitously fussed over Asvi, pouring her a fresh cup of hot tea and arranging and rearranging a platter of tiny rosebud cakes on the table set to Asvi’s right. Strangely, Asvi noticed that Danis’s elegantly slippered foot had somehow come to rest against the side of Belek’s expensive leather shoe.

Over her head, Belek quoted a few lines to Danis from what was evidently a new play he was working on. “ ‘Why do we chain ourselves to the yoke of the old land when we stand on soil budding with fresh blooms?’ ”

“Tendentious.”

“How about this? ‘On what secret paths does the soul tread toward its beloved?’ ”

Danis raised an eyebrow, quirking up her mouth until he flushed.

“Ai! Belek!”

He looked up from his rapt contemplation of Danis’s skeptical expression. A man wearing the ostentatious clothes of those who want to flaunt their money had just entered the room. The fellow beckoned to Belek with the expectant obliviousness of an individual who always gets what he wants.

“Oh, good, I was hoping he would come, since he’s expressed interest in bankrolling the next production,” Belek remarked to Danis, and left them.

Before Danis could follow, Asvi grasped her hand and tightened her grip until Danis bent close.

“Are you well, Dear Mother? I know this must be an ordeal. You need endure only a little longer.”

“Are you lovers?” Asvi whispered, thinking of how devoted her son was to this woman whom she’d never really understood.

“Lovers?”

“You and Belek?”

Danis laughed merrily as she glanced toward the two actors, handsome men with fine features and dashing smiles. “No. I’m not his type. But I do have a secret, Dear Mother. I help him write his plays.”

“Women aren’t allowed to take part in the theater. It would be indecent.”

“An antiquated custom held over from the old lands. I know you won’t tell.”

She withdrew her hand from Asvi’s grip as a flood of new visitors swept in. Everyone carefully did not see her; it was considered impolite to greet the widow until after the crossing ceremony was complete, since she was legally dead the instant her husband died. Anyway, she’d been seated in a corner out of the way, as easy to overlook as a modest wooden stool set amid an ostentatious stage set.

Danis, secretly writing for the theater!

The thought, blending with the constant flow of visitors in and out like the rush of waters, reminded her of the time she had traveled to the sea as a girl. Her father had taken her the twenty days’ journey to the harbor city of Farport, where Meklos had been supervising the family’s farthest warehouse. At that time, Meklos was still a fourth son, a man who might consider a sheepherder’s reasonably pretty daughter as a marriage prospect because his older brothers hadn’t yet died and left him to be headman quite unexpectedly.

She had watched ships shear away across the water, sails beating in the wind like wings lightened by magic. A handsome sailor, one of the far-traveling Aivur with their skin the color of pale spring leaves, had winked at her. He’d smiled when he was sure he had her attention and told her half the crew of the ship he sailed with were women, that a strong girl like her could take a chance on adventure.

Adventure!

But her father had already told her she needed to marry to benefit the family so her younger brothers could have a better life than his own. So her mother, weak from so much childbearing, would never be forced into the long walk if her father died before his wife did.

Three days later, she’d been wed to Meklos, and her father had a foothold in the wool trade. On the strength of his new alliance, Meklos had been allowed to move back upriver to his inland birthplace. Her second son, Vesterilos, lived now in Farport with a foreign-born wife and a growing family, tending his share of the wool trade. He and his father had never gotten along, so he never visited, only wrote terse reports, appended with long descriptions of the grandchildren for her, along with occasional gifts of spices from overseas.

The murmuring voices of women standing by the side table jerked her attention back to the parlor. They were tasting the cakes with appraising bites.

“These aren’t as succulent as I’d expect in this household,” one sniffed with a snide look toward Danis, half the room away.

“Are they from the shop? Young people these days have no respect for hard work.”

“She can afford to get everything done for her, can’t she? I pity Meklos’s widow. Such a drab creature. She’ll never see the inside of this parlor again.”

“Have you ever tried to speak to her? That hills accent!”

“She won’t have the backbone to stand up to a council member’s daughter, even one who is so much of a frippery she might as well be a tart. If you know what I mean.”

They laughed together, as if their shared disapproval tasted sweeter to them than the cakes did.

A flash of comprehension swept through Asvi like a blast of wind off the heights. If she walked out of the room with its crowded, busy, chattering, important people, no one would stop her, because they would not notice her leaving. The gathering would proceed in exactly the same manner. She could set a stick in her place and it would do.

She stood.

For one breath in and one breath out she did not move. She ought to stay. Her mind knew her duty. But her body was restless.

Like the merest touch of a breeze, she wove her way through gaps between clusters of people, all the way to the door. Stepping past the threshold took no effort at all. No one called after her. A constant swell and ebb of conversation floated out of the parlor to push her like a current along the path her feet remembered best: down the main corridor toward the back of the house.

As the noise grew muted, her steps slowed. A strange reluctance wrapped around her like invisible vines as she approached the door to the kitchen, the place she had always taken refuge. She would live in the downstairs room and come here every morning from now until the day she was too weak to manage the work. After that she would lie abed until she died in a room with no view of the sky.

Through the partly open door she heard Feloa giving directions to Bavira. They did not need her. Danis would send out for more cakes from the shop. Anyway, a widow did not cook for the crossing ceremony of her dead husband. That would be like a ghost serving food to the living: nothing but trouble. Once Me­klos’s soul had crossed, and with the tithe paid, all would go back to what it had been, except it would never again be what it was. Her marriage to Meklos had obliged her to serve him. But he was dead, and that meant she was legally dead and therefore only able to remain among the living if her male relatives paid a tithe to the temple.

But what if she did not want to remain among the living if living meant trudging onward as a shadow within the life she’d led? She hadn’t been unhappy, precisely. Her father had told her often enough that her dutiful obedience had brought good fortune to the family. But her brothers were secure, her sons were grown, and her father was dead, his gentle gaze no longer leashing her to the earth.

Bars of light and shadow in the passage ahead warned her that a few more steps would bring her to the door that led out into the garden. She did not precisely move with volition but rather more as if drawn on a thread she hadn’t the will to untangle from her limbs. A plain hip-length cape with a hood hung from a hook on the wall. She slung it over her shoulders as she often did in the mornings. The outside door was ajar wide enough to allow her to slip through without touching the latch, so it wasn’t as if she actively opened it. Three steps took her down onto the garden walk and to the neat beds of herbs and flowers she’d planted over the years.

She paused at the bench where she often sat outside in solitude, beside four bricks she’d planted upright in a bed of lilies and chrysanthemums. The three daughters and one son who’d not lived past infancy hadn’t been old enough to earn a temple burial, so she had secretly rescued the bodies before they could be tossed into the night soil wagon and had buried them in the garden. Bending, she kissed her fingers and touched each brick with the same tender grief with which she’d given each infant their farewell before she cast dirt over their faces. But she did not linger.

The thread tugged onward. The elderly gardener was working beyond a latticework screen that set apart the audience garden where visitors could take tea and conversation amid plants chosen for their appealing fragrance and attractive appearance. The old man did not look up. For all she knew, he’d not been told he had a new master. The change would make little difference to his routine, after all. Men were not sent on the long walk. They were never a burden, and anyway the dragons did not want them.

The big bar and thick lock on the garden gate had been set aside. She heard the wheels of a cart. A young man appeared carrying a large covered tray.

“Is this the way to the kitchens?” he asked her without preamble, mistaking her drab clothing for that of a servant.

Her voice had failed her some time ago. She pointed down the walk and stepped aside to let him pass. A second young man followed with another tray, then a third and a fourth, striding with the vigor of youth and destination. When they had passed, she found the gate into the rear courtyard, where deliveries were made, standing quite open as it usually never did.

There was no one else in the courtyard. The back gate into the alley gaped wide. It was easy to keep walking, to leave the compound and continue down an alley that ran along the back of households that belonged to other prosperous trading clans.

The alley split at an intersection. She paused, imagining the layout of the compound of their clan, and the neighboring houses, and the nearby streets as if seen from above as a dragon would see, if dragons ever flew over the city. Where did a person go, when they went out with no obligation tying their hands? Because it was the most familiar place she could think of, she headed toward the market.

Fruits, vegetables, grains, spices: each had their own lane under the arches of the east market that lay close to her home. The movement and color of the morning’s business swirling around her made her feel like the wind, unseen but present. It wasn’t until she reached the spice lane that a voice caught her in its hook and reeled her to a halt.

“Mistress! Here you are! A little late today. I have your usual box ready. I even have a fine packet of dried alsberry, early this season. I saved it especially for you.”

The spice seller was a hearty man who had recently succeeded his father in the trade. He was voluble, chattering on about his second wife’s pregnancy—​her first—​without needing anything from Asvi except nods and smiles.

Suddenly she was stricken by curiosity. “How much does it cost?” she asked, feeling the weight of the box in her hands as she took it from him because she was unable to say no.

He chuckled to cover a wince of discomfort. “You needn’t trouble yourself, mistress. I’ll send my eldest son over to collect from Master Meklos. It is the very errand I used to do before my good father crossed. You’re a fortunate woman. Your husband never haggles over your expensive tastes!”

He turned to a new customer, leaving her standing with the box.

Should she go home with the spices? Or shop first for vegetables, grain, and fruit? Should she plan the evening’s meal, even though she could not cook it?

A cold sensation seeped against her right foot like the pressure of death’s chilly breath. When she glanced down, she found herself standing in a tiny puddle of liquid—​she hoped it was water—​saturating the silk of her indoor slippers. The spreading stain—​what a waste of good silk!—​catapulted her into movement. Carrying the spice box by its strap, she wove her way through the hum and bustle of the market to the lane where footwear was sold. She passed elegant stalls selling city shoes and city boots and fetched up in a quiet section where a rustic couple were shaping the hardy styles worn in the highlands. Even the shopkeepers’ hills accent felt well-worn and comfortable, though she heard in their long o’s and sharp ch’s how her own speech had been shortened and softened by so many years in the city. They treated her well; they could still hear the hints of her childhood in her voice.

Because no one knew Meklos was dead, and the short cape covered much of her widow’s dress, it was easy to direct them to collect from the household of such an illustrious merchant. She walked away shod in sturdy wool boots, following the melody of wind chimes. Meklos hadn’t liked the sound, which she associated with the ever-present voice of the wind on the slopes of the high hills where she had tended sheep as a girl, when the sky was her roof and the wind her companion. Here at the northwest corner of the great market arcade a person could see the east gate, open for the day. Chimes hung on either side because demons hated the high metallic tones and would hesitate to charge past them. The guards wore tiny chimes sewn to their brimmed hats. They stared straight ahead, not seeing her as she walked out of the gate into the outer ring of the city, although they cast measuring gazes at young women about their daily errands.

All household compounds huddled safely inside the high stone wall of the city proper, while the expansive outer ring of gardens was protected by a wooden palisade. The stockyards and tanneries lay in Tanners’ Town about a league away, because the beasts attracted demons. She walked past gardens on the eastern road toward the Morning Gate of the palisade. The crossing temple, where the dead set out for their final journey to the mountains of morning, blocked her view of the gate.

Built of bricks and capped with a massive dragon’s horn at each of its four corners, the compound had two entrances: one for the priests and one for the dead. No one else was allowed to enter, or leave, because the dead held within their transitioning flesh the seeds of lightning and disruptive magic. Demons fed on blood and magic—​blood because it held the power of life, magic because it sprouted out of death. The priest gate, closed, faced toward the city walls.

Four young women hurried past her. By their faces she could guess they were sisters, around the ages of her own sons with perhaps ten or twelve years between oldest and youngest. As a bell began to clang on the other side of the compound, first one and then all the women broke into a run, three sobbing brokenly and one urging the others on.

The bell rang the weekly call for the long walk. Asvi hastened her steps, caught by the urgency of the young women. Following them around the far corner of the temple brought her in sight of the palisade’s Morning Gate.

Seven death wagons waited in a column, driven by priest-drovers and escorted by a cohort of priest-guards. Hook-mouthed, four-eyed, six-legged ghouls stirred restlessly in the traces, heads yearning repeatedly toward the canvas-covered wagon beds that concealed corpses. The seventh wagon was yoked to a quartet of stolid oxen who had heads lowered and shoulders bunched. Three elderly women huddled in the bed of the ox-drawn wagon. Another eight women waited by the wheels in their brown widow’s garb. Those eight were healthy enough to walk, although their heads were bowed and their hands folded with womanly resignation.

It was to one of these women that the sisters ran. They crowded around her as the first wagon jolted forward, headed out on the long walk. What bright, sorrowing faces they had! How concerned they looked, desperate and grieving! As Asvi walked closer, drawn by their tears, she saw how threadbare their clothing was, how their mother’s widow’s dress was a faded, much mended hand-me-down, buttoning up the front, the kind of dress bought at the ragpickers by a bride who can afford nothing better.

“We tried, Mama. We tried,” cried the eldest. “But we couldn’t raise enough. The priests kept raising the fee when they saw how desperate we are. What will we do without you?”

The second wagon moved in the wake of the first. The other women sidled away from the commotion, looking frightened. A woman’s grief was meant to be shared in private, not in so public and audacious a way.

“There, there, my girls.” The woman touched each of her daughters with tenderness. She might have been a good ten years older than Asvi, or maybe she had just lived harder on the edge of want. Struggle and deprivation aged a person, too, as it had aged Asvi’s mother, who at least had died in her own bed with her children beside her. “I know you did your best. The priests say women go ahead to make a comfortable home for those who will come after. I will be waiting when you make your crossing many years out, gods willing.”

The third wagon pulled forward as the young women wept and their mother comforted them. So had Posyon tried to comfort her, when he was the one forced to leave behind those who loved him.

A sensation as powerful as the beating of furious wings flamed in Asvi’s chest. She tugged off the obsidian-and-carnelian-bead bracelet. Without plan, more like leaping off a cliff, she strode up to the little group as, with a grinding of axles, the fourth wagon moved. She slipped in among them with two fingers to her lips, for silence.

“Here.” As the young women gaped, surprised at her intrusion, she grasped the older woman’s arm quite rudely and yanked the bracelet onto her wrist. “You need it more than I do.”

A startled gaze raised to meet her own, brimming with tears. “But mistress, this is yours.”

“I know what I am doing.” All the years of bowing before Meklos’s demands fell from her shoulders like a weight dropping. She felt almost dizzy with the sense that the walls had fallen away at long last. The fifth wagon jerked forward with a sharp command from its drover. “This is what the gods intend for me. You belong with the family who loves and needs you. Go. Hurry, before the priests notice.”

She slung the cloak off her shoulders and slid it over the other woman to conceal her clothing.

“Make ready!” called a guard as the sixth wagon shifted and rolled. He hurried over to them, gaze sharp and lips pursed with disapproval. “You should already have made your preparations. Leave-taking is not allowed at the gate.”

“It was just one last kiss for my sister and the daughters I’m leaving with her.” Asvi spoke so brusquely the poor young man took a step back, surprised at her vehemence. The lie fell easily from her mouth. She’d never had a sister, nor any daughters who had lived past three summers. She nodded at them and walked away without looking back.

As the last wagon began to move, another priest-guard came running up with his spear and net to scold the walking women. “Hurry! We must make Eldaal Temple before dusk, and we’re getting a late start. If you get tired you may sit in the wagon. But there isn’t enough room for all. You’ll have to switch out.”

He did not glance at Asvi nor did he notice anything strange about her presence there. She was just another valueless old woman, exactly like the others.

She walked briskly through the double-walled palisade gate and past its guard towers, its chimes and lanterns that would be lit when night fell. Beyond the barrier lay fields and orchards tended by farmers who lived within the walls after sunset. The sky was blue, striped with high, thin clouds. It was warm but not hot, a pleasant day to walk if you liked walking.

She had grown up walking along the hills, so the steady rise of the road did not trouble her. Avoiding the last wagon with its passengers and their inevitable questions was easy. She did not fear the harnessed ghouls, who had no interest in living flesh and wouldn’t even go after lambs. The wind breathed a slow song across fields of barley and dry-soil rice. In the distance, she spotted the threads of dragons curling around the peaks. A woman began to cry.

Her fear had fallen away when she’d taken off the bracelet and given away the cape. Posyon had gone to the edge of the world. Why not her? She would see the mountains up close, as she’d always yearned to. She’d finally follow the dragons into the clouds.

Midday passed, accompanied only by the tinkling of the chimes hanging from the guards’ hats and the spokes of the wheels. Alerted by the chimes, people working in the fields did not look their way, since it brought ill fortune to stare at the long walk. The corpses were too freshly dead to speak. The guards ignored their charges. The women were too much strangers to one another to speak of their own lives. Perhaps some had even loved the husband or brother or son whose death left them vulnerable. Their silence felt charged with despair.

In the early afternoon the wagons took a short rest in the shade of a row of mulberry trees. One of the guards handed out faring bread. She could not abide bad food caused by carelessness or cheapness.

“This is sour and undercooked,” she said to the priest-commander, showing him how spongy and dense the bread was. “Surely we are not expected to eat inedible food for the entire journey.”

Her bold comment startled the man.

“We cook as we go,” he said in a stern tone, mouth pursed with disdain. “We haven’t the leisure to please our palates. Unless you think you can do better.”

“Of course I can do better.”

He snorted, turning away as he called for the drovers to get the wagons moving. “We must make Eldaal Temple before sunset.”

They walked.

The temple was set away from the road behind a screen of thorn-gast trees. No one lived here. Countryside temples were built as refuges since demons might attack day or night. The corpse wagons and the oxen were sheltered in a shed protected by chimes and the ghouls corralled in a stockade surrounded by ground glass. She ignored the open door that led to a dim barracks where the women sank exhausted onto hard pallets. Instead of resting she took her spice case to the kitchen.

Two guards assigned kitchen duty had started a fire in the hearth. She ignored their surprise when she walked in and began looking through the bags and baskets of provisions.

“Simple fare can be well made,” she instructed them, setting them to work as she had done with her sons when they were boys. Barley flour mixed with nuts and a pinch of alsberry was soon baking for the next day’s faring bread. She chopped up cabbages and onions to cook with oil, garlic, ginger, and star anise. The priest-mage came in to set out lamps lit by the magic slowly bleeding out of the corpses. He lingered, inhaling the scent as she whipped up a savory batter for pancakes fried in oil to go with the cabbage for the evening’s meal.

Everything was eaten, down to the last bite. The two guards, now smiling and genial, cleaned up while she set beans to soak for a hearty morning pottage. The commander came in wearing a frown.

“People need strength,” she said to him, thinking he was about to complain about the beans or the pancakes or the cooling bread.

He said, grimly, “The food tasted well, mistress.”

Then he remembered she was dead, no longer deserving a living woman’s title of respect, and he flushed.

She said, “I’ll cook every night, with your permission. I am sure you priests are powerful enough that you’ll take no harm in eating food cooked by a ghost. By the amount of provisions, I am guessing it will be about seventeen days’ journey.”

“That’s right,” he said, startled again. “It usually takes seventeen days to the bridge into dragon country past which no man can follow.”

Seventeen days. She took it as a challenge instead of fretting. Each night she concocted a different style of meal from the staples. Even the women grew more animated. Several who clearly had never had enough to eat began to gain strength instead of wasting away.

The third night she heard a guard complaining to the commander outside the way temple’s kitchen door. “Your Honor, the ghouls are growing weak. Usually one or two of the women have died by now.”

“They’re not women, boy. They’re ghosts.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Should we forbid one of the ghosts from eating? The eldest, perhaps? She can’t even walk on her own.”

The commander sighed. “I don’t want to risk it.”

“Risk what?”

“I don’t know about you, but this is the best food I’ve had on the long walk in all my years supervising it. Feed one of the corpses to the ghouls.”

“But the dead are meant for—”

“Do as I command. Don’t mention the ghouls again.”

With shaking hands, she finished preparing a stew of tubers sweetened with pears. The priests ate with gusto, and the women gratefully, but although the meal was as tasty as the ones that had come before, this night it tasted of ashes in her mouth. All that night she barely slept thinking she heard the ghouls slurping on decaying flesh and crunching on bones. But at least all the women woke up the next morning and set out with the wagons. She counted them five times, to make sure.

The fields gave way to uninhabited scrubland that turned into pine and spruce forest in which they walked in a rare sort of peace, unable to see the mountains. The women exchanged names and began to speak of commonplace things.

After days in the forest, the landscape opened up again as they emerged past the tree line onto a high plateau of short grass and frail summer flowers. The mountains rose in fierce majesty, gleaming in the crisp air beneath the sharp sun. This close, she could see a rippling halo of shining dragons winding around the peaks like elongated clouds painted in a rainbow of colors. Sometimes the dragons would dive steeply, then pull up, rising laboriously with a blurred object clutched in their gleaming claws.

A new silence fell, weighted as with lead.

The procession reached a fork in the road, one branch turning north and the other turning south. Ahead, the plateau was split by a cleft running in a line north and south without any visible end. The eastern massif rose beyond the crevasse. The six corpse wagons continued north toward a distant temple placed at the fissure’s edge. Its wall bristled with horns, chimes, and corpse-fire lanterns burning with the waxy gleam of magic.

The commander himself, and the two guards who had helped her in the kitchen, accompanied the seventh wagon straight ahead along a rutted path. The oxen plodded toward a line of ghostly trees grown along the crevasse in the manner of trees growing alongside a river, fed by its moisture. As they approached, the uncanny appearance of the trees grew evident: paler than milk, almost translucent, like no trees she had ever seen. The women clustered close behind the wagon as they trudged in its wake. What else could they do? There was nowhere to run. Even Asvi felt a chill like doom whispering off the wraithlike trees. Branches stirred as if tasting their approach.

“What will we do?” whispered a woman whose living name had been Vicara. She was often frightened, and cringed at every unexpected noise. “Will it hurt when they eat us?”

“Hush,” said the one who’d been called Bilad. She never smiled. “Our sacrifice keeps the city safe. We prepare a home for those who come after us.”

They all looked at Asvi.

“Why did you do it?” Bilad asked the question at last.

“I want to see the dragons.”

They sidled away from her, as if she were a dangerous influence, malicious and wild. But there was no escaping the crossing: these twelve old women, even if Asvi and several of the others really weren’t so very old, not like aged Kvivim, whose family, the elder had told them in a frail whisper, could have afforded the tithe for her but didn’t want to pay it for a woman who could barely walk. Maybe a different death would have been preferable, but Kvivim had stubbornly clung to life and Asvi admired her for it.

The respite was over and the end was nigh.

They walked toward where the trees grew thickest, spreading out to either side for some distance along the crevasse until the wood petered out into a few last stragglers.

In front of the central grove stood a massive gate of white wood shaped as a dragon’s gaping mouth. The trees crowded up on either side like brambles too thick to penetrate, forming a barrier that blocked anyone from going into the forest unless they entered through the gate.

The drover halted the wagon. The guards used ropes to drag open the gate, not touching it with their hands. A gleaming silver-white path led straight from the gate’s gulletlike opening into the shadows under the trees.

The priest-commander raised both hands, palms up to entreat the heavens. “So is it said, that in the first days after landfall, a fog rolled down out of the mountains of morning, and in it dwelt a ravage of demons. Again and again they descended, ravenous and insatiable. No sacrifice assuaged them, not even the offer of daughters in a marriage of blood. Only when the dragons came did the demons retreat. Ever after, according to the covenant of the new land, the dragons took their tithe in return for protection. By your sacrifice the world lives.”

Dutiful Bilad went first through the gate’s open maw, assisting old Kvivim. The others followed, but the commander tapped Asvi’s arm with his staff of command to hold her back.

In a low voice he said, “The temple here could use a cook. It’s so isolated, no one will know.” He gave a sly tilt of his head back the way they’d come.

The other women had all crossed by now. They halted on the other side, surprised as the guards set their strength to the ropes and began to haul the open gates shut.

“Asvi?” Bilad called, sounding scared now that she wasn’t with them to steady their hearts with her food.

She thought of Danis’s words. What could the priest do to her now? Once she crossed, he could not follow.

“You do need a cook, but it won’t be me. My father did not raise me to act so dishonorably. I will not let others shoulder the burden on my behalf. But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? Your own magistrates cheat people, demanding more than they can pay and keeping the extra money for themselves. You would cheat the tithe by keeping me back to gratify your own belly. It’s a disgrace you feed such poor food to the women you send here. They deserve better on their journey.”

“Why waste food on people who will be dead soon?” he snapped.

“You are not a good man. No wonder the dragons don’t want the curdled taste of the likes of you.”

She turned away from his reddening face and slipped through the opening just before the guards slammed the gates shut.

“What was that about?” asked Bilad.

“I told him the priests ought to serve better food on the long walk.”

Several of the women laughed nervously. No one moved. The trees sighed, and in their rustling whispered regret, despair, exhaustion, fragility, worthlessness, fear, pain, defeat, surrender. The sun began its slow descent across the vast expanse of the sky. Looking out over the land falling away westward was like being able to see into forever. But they didn’t belong to that world anymore.

She turned her back on the life she’d lived and set off along the trail. Her limbs felt wooden, graceless, heavy, but the lure of dragons pulled her on.

The others reluctantly shuffled after, deeper into the disturbing silence. Although the branches had no leaves, the trees’ eerie canopy nevertheless blocked the sun’s rays. They followed the trail along a path wrapped in an intangible shroud that sucked away all noise and most light. No birds sang or insects buzzed. Not a single flower bloomed although it was midsummer.

In the dimness, it was just possible to see strange shapes warping the trunks with bulges and decaying mounds. Now that Asvi walked through the wood, she saw these were not ordinary trees. They too were ghouls, akin to the creatures who had pulled the corpse wagons. They grew out of bodies, eating the flesh and building a scaffolding out of the skeletons to stretch toward the everlasting sky.

Their presence troubled Asvi like a boil burning hot in her gut. What if they reached out with their swaying branches to yank her into their midst? They flourished because they fed on the dying flesh and abandoned magic of discarded women.

Were these trees what it really meant to feed the dragons? That women walked so far and suffered so much fear and exhaustion only to become food for ghouls? Why not just feed the doomed women to the hauling beasts and be done with the facade of ceremony? The false promise of noble sacrifice?

Bitterly her heart soured and raged. It wasn’t fair or right. Danis had been correct about that. Maybe Danis would find a way to change things back home as Asvi could never have done.

Yet the part of her mind that measured ingredients and portions nudged her fear and anger aside. There weren’t enough trees to account for all the years and generations of the long walk. The women hadn’t all died here, short of their unseen goal.

“Keep walking and don’t stop or pause at all.” She herded them onward when their steps lagged as they stared around in fear and despair.

Light marked the end of the trail’s tunnel. A gulf of brightness awaited them, so fierce it was hard to look as they came closer. A person could drown in such light. Her heart beat faster. Her steps picked up as if she were going to meet the long-sought lover she had never had.

She emerged from the trees at the edge of a cliff face, a sheer, dizzying drop-off overlooking a staggering height. What she had thought from a distance must be a shallow fissure was a crevasse far too wide to shoot an arrow across and so deep she could not see its bottom. Thorn-gast ran like a fence along the far cliffside, and behind them grew beech, sycamore, and fir. Beyond the treetops in the most incongruous manner imaginable rose a watchtower. Threads of smoke rose from chimneys, marking a fort or settlement impossible to see from this distance and angle.

“There’s someone living over there but no way across,” said Bilad, coming up beside her.

Vicara fell to her knees, too drained even to weep. “What do we do now? Must we walk back into the trees? Is that the death that awaits us after all? To rot on the earth like discarded trash? Not even anything glorious?”

But Kvivim said, “Look! Demons!”

Because she was so bent over with age, the old woman was looking down into the crevasse. Gleaming colors churned far below within a sea of changeable fog caught in the fathomless abyss. Lean shadows flicked through the fog like fish swimming in murky waters. At first it seemed the demons were swimming away, but then the shapes flashed around and swarmed back toward the cliff face. They had scented the women.

A long, sinuous body rippled through the mist, colors shining in its wake. It was many times the length of the longest of the demon shadows. Its head, like a spear’s point, thrust up out of the fog, scales gleaming with the variegated colors of polished amber. Slender whiskers whipped, tasting the air. Then it plunged back beneath the surface and drove forward, coming up behind the demons and swallowing them whole.

Its body vanished from sight, diving deep into the obscuring fog.

“Gods bless us,” whispered Bilad.

The fog settled to become a still, opaque skin. Then it began again to churn as something huge ascended toward the surface. The dragon emerged out of the fog headfirst, the rest of its massive body following after. It coiled skyward in a spiral, leaving a trail of color in its wake.

All the women fell to their knees except Asvi. She stared with a hand pressed to her heart as the dragon flew on shining wings up out of the crevasse’s depths. It rose past them, so bright she had to shade her eyes, then swooped down to hover impossibly in the air more like a delicate hummingbird than a massive beast. Its eyes were great round brass sheets slit with lozenges of pure black. Its wings thrummed with the beat of a drum through their hearts. It opened its jaw wide and wider still until the lower part of its muzzle slammed into the edge of the fissure with a weight that shuddered through their feet.

Vicara leaped to her feet and turned, taking a step to run back into the wood. The path was gone, vanished, only a wall of deathly trees waiting to consume them. Bilad grabbed Vicara’s arm and dragged her to a halt.

“Wait,” said Asvi.

The dragon’s gleaming body elongated, stretching out and out across the gulf until the tip of its tail caught the far side and hooked there. Impossibly, through the gaping mouth appeared not a dark gullet simmering with banked fire but a translucent veil whose shimmering curtain gave onto a bridge made by the dragon’s glistening back.

“I can’t,” said Vicara. “I’d rather die here.”

Asvi looked into the eyes of the dragon, but the slits had closed. The creature had gone utterly still, almost lifeless. Its body created a solid span arching over the chasm to the shore beyond, which was dragon country, a place men dared not walk. Once across, no one could return.

Yet, even though to think of this was a fearful thing, curiosity tugged at her, like wondering if a new spice would flavor the food or if it was poison. She had grown so far beyond the first step she had taken out of the parlor that she didn’t at first recognize the shod foot—​her own!—​as she set it down onto a surface hard as tile.

If she looked back she would not go forward, so she did not look back. The span of its back had no railing. An acrid wind curled up from the depths to tug at her skirt and hair. Even stretching out her arms to either side, she could not measure the breadth of its torso. Where its spine should have lifted up along its back, there was instead a dip, like an inverted spine, as if she were in truth walking down a monstrously long gullet whose wall was invisible to her gaze. When she reached the midpoint she dared look to either side along the length of the crevasse. To the north, appearing like a child’s toy blocks, stood the temple tucked against the edge of the chasm. Glittering metal ladders linked down to caves hewn into the rock face. To the south, even farther away and visible only because of a rainbow spill of magic like a waterfall pouring down from the cave mouths into the fog, stood another temple. This was also what they meant when they said the dead protected the living, the secret knowledge the priests held to themselves and with which they ruled over the prince.

The crevasse was a barrier but not enough of a barrier. Temples had been built all along the course of the chasm. The magic unwoven from the dead kept most of the demons out. What the magic could not repulse, the dragons hunted.

The other women reached her, moving together as they had come to do over the days of the journey. Their fear propelled her on, and yet as she walked with them, she slowly, by degrees, fell to the back of the group and then behind. A thread of yearning still tugged her toward the peaks so impossibly far away. As they came down the last part of the span she saw a gap in the line of trees that, like a railing, guarded the cliff’s edge. Beyond the gap lay a village.

A village! Of all the ordinary things, this was the one she had not expected to see.

The height and angle of the span, and perhaps the magic within the dragon itself, gave her a strangely clear view of the distant town. No walls surrounded it but rather a peculiar arrangement of moats, chimes, and intimidating pillars that resembled the bony remains of giant rib cages. The watchtower overlooked it all.

People hurried up to the ledge where the span met the far shore. They were ordinary women, older but hearty and healthy-looking, with outstretched arms and welcoming smiles, people who have reached a safe haven and, having prospered there, are glad to open their doors to new refugees.

Vicara began to snivel, again. For once she was the one who led the way, hastening along the last bit of the span until she collapsed onto firm soil. The others followed, laughing and weeping. Kvivim said, “I feel better than I have in years!”

But Asvi’s feet slowed and halted before she reached the end of the bridge.

“Asvi!” called Bilad, waving at her from the safety of the other side. “There’s a whole town here, built by the women who survived the long walk. A place we can live in peace! And we never knew!”

A hidden refuge. A safe haven at the end of the long walk.

Her shoulders dropped as she exhaled, letting go of the fear and the tension. It seemed too good to be true and yet . . . and yet . . . a pinch constricted her heart.

Was this all? A secret hideaway, concealed from the priests with the puzzling complicity of the dragons? It was an unexpected reprieve, certainly, but she couldn’t shake the feeling she’d been handed a basket of barely edible weeds.

It was better than being eaten alive by dragons, wasn’t it? It was better than dying in a cloud of toxic boiling steam spat out by a demon. Better than dying on the road and being fed to ghouls, or sitting under a canopy of trees that grew by absorbing the essence of living things. She’d take a room, with a bed, and she’d cook, as she always had. It would be a satisfying life in that way. She’d make do with what foodstuffs they had available, just as she always had. Maybe in the dragon country there would be a way to get a message to Fellspire Pass, wherever it lay up in the massif, marking the only route to a distant country on a treacherous road winding through the wilderness of demons.

Even thinking this, she could not move her feet to walk on into this new life. Her heart weighed like a stone.

A low tone rumbled through the span beneath her feet. Words thrummed up into her flesh, not quite spoken, not quite heard.

“What is it you seek, sister?”

“I wanted to see the mountains,” she whispered.

“And you will, if you wish it.”

“Must I stop here?” she asked.

“This is not the end of the journey. Just a way station as you gather strength.”

“Can I not travel on right now?”

The dragon’s laughter was a rumble like the earth shaking. “Very well.”

A sonorous sound rang in the air, its complicated resonance vibrating in her flesh as if the dragon itself were a bell giving warning. The women at the end of the span shepherded the new arrivals away from the edge. Asvi’s companions were guided toward the village down a wide avenue lined by double-branched dragon horns twice the height of the tallest of the women. They called to her, but she did not answer.

The dragon spilled life back into its stony span. Its tail unhooked from the far shore. Its head lifted toward the sky. Asvi felt herself trapped deep in the hot, sulfuric gullet, airless, suffocating. Just as her life had been before.

Then the dragon turned itself inside out, or outside in, and abruptly Asvi found herself braced on the back of its mighty neck as it flew east toward the mountains. She grasped for the whiplike ends of its horns to hold herself steady. The wind stung her face, and her hands hurt from gripping so hard, and yet exhilaration thrilled through her heart.

They passed over the town. Its neat brick buildings were laced with star-crown vines. Gardens blazed with summer blossoms and ripening vegetables. A central plaza ringed a fountain in the shape of a dragon’s skull pouring water from its orifices. People waved without alarm, as if they saw dragons fly close overhead every day and welcomed their presence. In the watchtower, women stood guard as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for women to do. If only Danis were here to see it. But of course Danis would never be forced out onto the long walk, would she? She was protected; she was safe, if living that life could be called safety.

A white stone path led eastward. Soon it split into three paths, each of which led to another village, and then three more each after that, splitting again like the delta fan of a river spreading wide. These villages were smaller clusters of houses, work sheds, and gardens set around a central plaza. Each was ringed by fences built of giant bones—​dragon bones—​and moats filled with what looked like heaps of glittering crystal sand gleaming hotly under the sun. A draft rose from the mounds, thick with a drowsy scent of glorious summer solitude amid the rocky pastures of her youth. One of the mounds looked recently dug out. Its pit was streaked with the remains of a slick, torn membrane withering to dryness under the sun.

As they cleared the last of the villages, they flew onward, eastward, upward, over the tufted grass and stunted woodland of the plateau. Gnarled juniper was overtaken by scrub thorn-gast tangling in elongated veins across the land. Grass gave way to spiny, fernlike plants and blooms whose petals undulated in the wind like tongues licking the air.

A ripple of movement caught her eye. The dragon shifted course until they flew over a group of eight hunters running as in pursuit of prey.

Hunters! How had hunters crossed the chasm?

Farther ahead, an unseen creature thrashed a trail through the tall grass, accompanied by puffs of glimmering mist that she recognized as the exhalation of a demon. When she looked back, amazed at the boldness of the hunters, she realized they were women, armed with spears, bows, courage, and resolve. Where had these women come from? They were manifestly not the weary, discarded widows and servants sent on the long walk. They were hale and strong, fleet of foot and tireless. Delicate two-pronged horns not much more than a finger’s height grew out of their temples. Their skin, as dark as Asvi’s own, had an uncanny sheen, as if they did not precisely have skin as she did but something more like soft scales.

When they looked up, they hailed the dragon with a whistling keen that dug into her flesh and throbbed in her bones as if it were meant to cut her open.

“Who are they?” she asked, even as the rumbling of the wind swallowed her words.

“Our sisters,” said the dragon, and kept flying, leaving the hunters behind.

Up they rose, as the peaks slashed into the sky ahead, growing larger, impassable. Asvi became dizzy, gulping in thin air, shivering as the temperature dropped until she felt packed in ice. But the dragon’s heat rose to keep her heart warm and her courage kindled.

They flew along avalanche-strewn slopes, across blinding ice fields, and past the peaks with their jagged teeth. Beyond lay a rugged plateau cut into pinnacles and canyons and flat-topped mountains. This massive upland ended in a stark escarpment, like the edge of the world. Spinning its way down on a thread of bronze light, the dragon came to rest on a flat prominence of bare rock where the mountain massif came to its abrupt end. With a turning, inside out or outside in, the dragon curled in on itself, shrinking into a denser shape.

Into a woman, clothed in bronze-brown skin. Two-pronged horns grew from the woman’s head, in a shape exactly like those of the dragon. Asvi stared at her, struck speechless at the change.

The woman gestured for her to look east.

The escarpment ran roughly along a north-south line. The mountainous massif they’d just flown over rose west behind them like the shoulders and back of a huge beast. The drop of the escarpment’s cliff face was too great for Asvi to measure. Here and there, waterfalls cut notches and funnels into its side. Falls of rock had accumulated into mysterious patterns at its base.

East lay an impossibly wide landscape shrouded in shifting mist, the distant horizon hidden by haze. Here and there the mist would shred, revealing a glimpse of meandering river or a forest whose moon-pale branches were surely those of ghoul-trees. Amid the ghostly pallor of the woodland the occasional solitary tree stood out for its startling color, as if grown from a precious gem. There were other sights as well: a city whose elegant ruins sprawled between the fork of a river; a towering bluff carved with the giant shapes of noble figures, crowned and robed, who didn’t quite look like men; a road paved in white stone, leading to some far-off realm, although from this distance the route appeared empty and untraveled.

These glimpses emerged and vanished within the ever-winding mist.

“Is that the land of demons?” Asvi shivered in the cold wind that howled across the height.

“Once we lived there and hunted there together with many other beings. Then the demons came.”

“Where did they come from?”

The woman tilted her head to one side as if listening to a voice Asvi could not hear. “The ancestors do not know. But in their relentless way, the demons have slowly driven us back to these mountains. We thought our kind were doomed because the demons destroyed our nests. We could no longer brood our young. Then your people came from over the sea.”

“Did we drive you out of the lowlands? Away from the ocean?”

“Oh, no. You do not have that kind of power.”

“What difference do we make, then? The demons kill us, too.”

“Yes. So we have observed. At first we thought you also were vermin, small and weak and with the native cunning and cruelty necessary to small, weak creatures if they wish to survive. But your kind wields a magic we cannot.”

“The magic the priests use to keep demons out of our land?”

“They harness death. But we can harness life.”

“Then why do you demand the sacrifice of women like me?”

“We ask merely a chance to harvest what is already being thrown away.”

Asvi thought of the chasm that separated the uplands from dragon country and how the priests evidently did not know about what lay beyond. She thought of quiet villages and tidy lives, of women standing sentry duty in watchtowers as if it were commonplace and perfectly normal for women to take on tasks that were elsewhere considered suitable only for men. She remembered the hunters she’d seen, with their budding horns and their youth and vigor. The outlying villages surrounded by bone fences and heaps of sand radiating heat under the summer sun. The strange vegetation never seen in the lowlands where people lived.

Maybe she should have gone with the Aivur sailor who’d offered her adventure so long ago. Maybe she should have settled into the room by the kitchen and accepted its boundaries for the rest of her life.

But what use are regrets? She was here now. There was no going back to what might have been. Anyway, here at the edge, she was glad to have seen this much.

“Did you bring me here to eat me?”

“Eat you?” The woman laughed. A deep echo of the dragon’s belling call shivered within her mirth, a reminder of how exceedingly large and powerful a dragon was. “I have not tried human flesh myself, but the ancestors say it is sour and either too greasy or too gristly. I brought you here, sister, because you asked to travel on.”

“Is this the end of the journey?”

“You tell me.”

Asvi again looked east over the wide wilderness and its hidden contours. A thread of fog had undulated out of the undifferentiated tangle of mist and was crawling up the face of the escarpment toward the very spot where she was standing.

“They never rest and will never rest until we have destroyed every last one.”

The woman stepped back just as Asvi heard a scrape of claws and a hiss of breath like the boiling of a kettle. A thick smear like an oily cloud of white slithered over the lip of the cliff and solidified into a demon. Once before, she had stood this close to a demon. It was about as big as she was, with six tentacle-like legs, a pair of lipless mouths, and a stack of pipelike tendrils clustered atop its dome of a head that pumped a steady stream of stinking mist into the air. Rearing back, it braced itself on its four hind limbs as its forelimbs waved to taste the air and find her scent.

Run.

If you run, they will chase you, her father had taught his children. Her brother had panicked and run. But even if you didn’t run, it would still see you.

Its head swung around, getting a fix on her. The dull round nodules in its head lit as if fired from within to an almost blinding blaze of garish color, like molten gems. The eyes had woken and would not sleep until they had fully absorbed every last fiber of its prey.

It opened its upper mouth and spat toward her. Too far to do real damage; still, the spray of mist spattered across her face, raising welts as she put up her hands too late to shield herself. Only then did her shock evaporate as a vision of her scalded brother flashed in her mind’s eye, how he had writhed in the grip of an unspeakable agony, unable even to cry or moan. Maybe it would have been better if the demon had eaten him to cut short the torment of his slow dying.

The demon slid closer to her, gurgling as it readied a bath of acid in which to boil her alive, so she couldn’t move while it sucked her dry.

The dragon—​she hadn’t seen it change—​dived from above and behind her. Too late the demon sheared away, making for the cliff. The dragon’s claws fastened over the demon’s hindquarters and lifted it as the demon spat harmlessly toward the receding ground. The dragon flew in a spiral upward into the cloudless blue of the sky. From that great height, it dropped the demon. When the creature hit the base of the escarpment, it cracked like stone into shards.

Asvi’s legs gave way. She collapsed onto her knees, hands shaking, breath coming in gasps. Yet it was exhilarating, too. So easily the dragon had disposed of the deadly beast.

With a scuff, the dragon landed many paces away from her. The air shimmered, drawn in and drawn out, and the woman with horns walked over to her, dusting off her hands.

“We were not the only beings who retreated, or died, when the demons invaded,” she remarked as she came up to Asvi. She indicated the wilderness. “When we became too few to keep their numbers in check, the ancestors made peace with the inevitability of our obliteration.”

“Until my people came from over the sea.”

“All beings in the world are woven with the weft and warp of the world’s magic. But each may wield it differently.”

“Do dragons weave?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know about weaving?”

“She who gave herself to the sands was a weaver in a town called Gedaala. Do you know that place?”

Asvi clambered to her feet, even as she knew she had no weapons that could defeat this creature standing beside her and chatting with her in the most unremarkable and yet utterly astounding way. “I have heard its name spoken in passing, but I don’t know it. Do you?”

“I grew up there. I lived there and worked there as a weaver. I was sent on the long walk. I crossed into dragon country, thinking I was meant to die there. I lived for a time in the company of others like me.”

“In the village I saw? The one that those I came with were being led to?”

“Yes. When I was ready, I went into the sands. Now I am as you see me.”

“So you do eat us!” She took a step away, caught herself retreating—​do not run!—​and held her ground.

“We do not eat you.”

Having flown with a dragon and seen the edge of the habitable world had given Asvi a new and exciting tincture of bravery. She thrust out her chin boldly. “This woman you claim to have once been. What was her name?”

“Merea.”

“If I called you Merea, would you answer?”

“I am Merea.”

“You are a dragon.”

“I am Merea, and I am a dragon.”

“But the woman named Merea is gone. You consumed her, did you not? Devoured everything of her except to use her form to speak to me. Is that what the sands are? A nesting ground?”

“The sand is what remains of the ancestors, the grains of their flesh and the sparks of their memories. Your bodies and your minds cook within the heat, if you will. And out of this, we are transformed and reborn.”

“So it is no different than it ever was. After our labor and our lives are used up down there, we are sent up here. You use up the last scraps that are left of us.” Anger made her heart ache. Disappointment bit like betrayal. Maybe it would be better to leap off the cliff and dash herself to death on the shores of the demon wilderness. At least that would be her choice.

The woman looked at the ground with a sigh, then up again. “Shall I tell you of my life? How my family sold me to a weaving shed when I was still a child? How I sat on the ground chained to a loom for years and years, never seeing daylight except through the open shed door? Was fed too little? Abused by those who owned me? How my hands became broken by the work so I was no longer useful to them? Or to any family, because I was too ill to bear sons and keep a husband? How I hobbled, in pain, up the long walk? I did not weep, you know. I believed I deserved nothing more. And yet the sky amazed me. I had forgotten the world could be beautiful.”

Asvi bowed her head. Her breath felt tight in her chest, and she wiped away a tear. But it would not do to let sentiment obscure her vision. “And then what happened?” she asked coldly.

“Do you know what I found in the village? I found peace. I found people who treated me with respect. I was happy there for many years. I sat in the sun when I wished. I took on such work as I could with my ruined hands.”

The woman held them out now, strong dark hands with a glimmer of scales and dusted with the dry, flaking residue of the demon she’d just killed. Yet they were human hands, too. Hands that had labored for long years to enrich someone else. Hands used up until they could give no more, and thus discarded.

“And then,” she said, meeting Asvi’s gaze with the hard, challenging light of her luminous eyes, “then I chose the sands.”

“Chose them? Or was forced to choose them?”

“Do you think we force your kind to join with us? That any dragon wishes to be born out of coercion and captivity? Those who come to our country may live out their lives and die by their own rites. If that is what you wish, Asvi, then the village’s peaceful round of life will be the end of your journey.”

Asvi raised her eyes to the west, as if she could see back into the room where she had woken up with her husband dead beside her, as if she could look down along the promise to her father fulfilled through all those years. Sparks drew dancing threads of gold and silver and bronze over the peaks and spires of the Great Divide, where dragons flew.

“What if I want wings?” she whispered.

Merea smiled sadly, softly. “Sister, you have always had wings. They were stolen from you long ago. Now they wait here with us, when you are ready.”