Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(2)

“She’s fit only for the block,” Mother says, voice muffled, mouth full.

In Oxorland, the suntrees, smothered in gleaming, poison-nectared flowers like copper bracelets weighing down a rich woman’s wrist, host many more grubs. They have softer wood, besides. Unar’s bore-knife went into them so easily.

“What’s the use, Erid? You’ll spend it all at once if we sell her. I know you. A lode of metal. A fine gown for begging from high-borns.”

“No! We’ll keep it. We’ll make sure it lasts till the end of our days.”

As evening approached, from her seat in the wind-tossed suntree crown, Unar saw a woman with midnight hair bound in a yellow-feathered headdress walking lithely along a branch path. Light-footed, the woman wore nothing but two slim cloths over hips and breasts, her moonset skin covered in sunburst patterns as though gold metal had been somehow pressed into her flesh. Merchants and slaves on the path had scattered hastily out of her way. The biggest man that Unar had ever seen, holding a wooden shield and bronze sword, walked in front of her, and six Servants in hooded honey-coloured robes walked behind.

It was the incarnation of the sun goddess, Oxor.

“And our family?” Father despises his fortuneless family. Except when trying to claim a distant ancestor who saved the life of a god in disguise by sharing wood for a fire. “My blood?”

“Your blood will go on. You said yourself just now that she’s almost old enough to breed. They’ll feed her. They’ll let her lie with whom she pleases. She’ll be happier a slave, Uranun. Happier than stricken and starving.”

Unar has never heard a crueller lie. She half expects the tattered blue curtain that curls around the cot to be thrown back, for her mother to seize her and insist that her father take her to the market at once.

She thinks, I can’t be a slave. That’s not what I’m for.

This conviction shines in her mind; she turns it like a coal on a fire. What is she for? Cutting dead branches for others to burn? Digging grubs?

Unar shivers on the broken cot in the dark behind the flimsy curtain and thinks of the proud poise of the sun goddess.

I wasn’t born a goddess or a god, and there’s nothing I can do about that.

She raises her callused hands to cover her mouth, to keep the sobs inside. But then her eyes open, and she stares at her hands.

Maybe they are the hands of a goddess.

How would anyone know if they are or not? Mighty souls don’t always choose wealthy bodies, so Teacher Eann says.

The soul enters the body at first breath. Anybody can be chosen. Usually a baby that takes its first breath close to the place where the old body died, but not always.

More than one goddess is missing from her Temple. Ilan, goddess of justice and kings. Irof, goddess of flowers. I could be one of them, not yet discovered.

That would teach her mother a lesson for wanting to sell her. If Unar had the mighty magic powers of a goddess, oh, how her mother would regret her careless selfishness!

The monsoon is over. The paths are open. Unar resolves to go to the closest Temple. How do they test for goddess souls? Does it hurt? It can’t hurt more than having a mother who hates her. The Temple lies in the crown of the biggest tallowwood tree, one of the emergent trees that rise even higher than the canopy and are always bathed in strong, full sun. Unar’s never dared dig for grubs there, because the biggest tallowwood is the sacred emergent of the goddess of birth and life, Audblayin, Waker of Senses.

At the Temple, they’ll know how to tell.

When her parents try to sell her as a slave in the morning, to have the sigil of obedience burned into her tongue forever, she’ll already be gone. Goddess or no, she won’t come back to the hovel.

As soon as she makes the decision, Unar’s heart races. The smell of quince blossom and wood fern fills her nostrils. Something inside her chest, like a seed sending out a tiny root, begins to grow there. No idea she’s ever had has felt so right, yet the sensation is distressing; she clutches at her rib cage. Had she eaten a grub that somehow survived and is squirming around in there? The seed-feeling stops.

Unar thinks the thought again, deliberately: I will go to Audblayin’s Garden.

Her whole body thrills with it. She hasn’t swallowed a live grub; it feels more like she’s swallowed a thousand candles. Hugging herself only makes it pulse harder. A second heart she didn’t know she could have. She almost cries out to ask her parents what’s happening, but stops herself in time.

This isn’t a thing of axe makers or woodcutters. It’s a thing whispered about in the school or the square.

A thing of Temple Servants and gods.

I’ll wait until they’re sleeping, and I’ll go.

Until now, the Garden seemed a place of dread. Life-sized carvings on the Gates show soldiers and spell-casters, victorious, defending the Temple in a hundred battles. They say there’s an invisible wall around it that keeps out wrongdoers, and in Unar’s world, wrongdoers means have-nothings, so that she, a have-nothing, can’t help but be a wrongdoer.

Yet when Unar sets out, the humming seed inside her seems to put out an added leaf whenever she takes the correct turn. The lower branch roads aren’t lit. Bats scream about their fruit-feasts, and Unar startles an owl. She carries only her bore-knife, heavy at her waist, and the night is cold and damp through the holes in her knee-length, knotted tunic. She sleeps in her father’s castoffs, too shameful to be seen by daylight.