Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(55)

Unar had never considered herself slow. Her powers had woken before she’d even reached the Garden. Every trick the other Gardeners had shown her she’d learned instantly. More, she’d gone beyond them. She’d gone beyond the Servants, those fools who hadn’t chosen her. Absolute was her belief that the rules that applied to others didn’t apply to her.

I am not slow. Or dank. Whatever that is.

She peered at Frog. Their faces were close. Frog reminded her of someone, but who?

“What do you wish to show me? It had better not be handstands or shadow puppets or any of the things you showed Bernreb.”

Frog held up Marram’s flute in the firelight.

“Can you play this?”

“I’m going back to bed.”

“Of course you cannot play it.” Frog’s eyes still shone. Her mouth was small and stern. So unlike a child’s.

The thought came to Unar: Desperate circumstances have made this girl into something unusual. Perhaps extraordinary. Just like me. The child went on. “Music is not allowed in the Garden. They did not tell you why, did they? Maybe they did not even tell Servant Oos.”

“Music is the province of Orin, the bird goddess. Music in the Garden would be trespass in the territory of a rival deity.”

“That is not why,” Frog hissed. “Music is the lifeblood of all magic, but it can be borrowed from the gifted, and Audblayin’s Servants would not want that, would they? No! Magic, access to the gods, whatever you wanna call it, is only for them, not for filthy Understorian maggots to have or to use! Their precious barrier blocks the movements of large livin’ things, but it does not block music, does it?”

“You make no sense. Calm yourself. There’s no magic in music. Green things grow in silence.”

Frog thrust the instrument into Unar’s hands.

“Play something. I will show you. Play it loudly. Play it badly. I do not care. I know you are not the one who has been takin’ lessons, but as dank as you are, I am sure you can put your lips to it and make sounds come out.”

“You hushed me only moments ago.”

“Now I am tellin’ you to play.”

Unar narrowed her eyes at the girl, but she put the flute to her pursed lips and sent her breath over the row of pipes.

Nothing. No sounds came out. Unar could hear the soft crackle of the fire, Hasbabsah’s faint and irregular wheeze, and water falling in the fishing room, but no matter how hard she blew, the pipes stayed silent.

Frog’s eyes had lost their light. No, it was that her skull had started glowing. The same ghostly luminescence that lit the room under the river outlined the girl’s skeleton, shining through her clothes. Unar could see her teeth through her closed mouth.

Then came that same strange, weightless feeling from before, on the brink of sleep. Like her body was dissolving and she was becoming part of the very air.

Startled, she let the flute drop into her lap.

“Do not stop,” Frog insisted, the glow fading so that the whites of her eyes emerged from the place where two black holes had been. “The spell is not finished. Play on.”

At once frightened and exhilarated—she was right, the magic here was in a person’s very bones—Unar took Hasbabsah’s hand again, finding it warm and the pulse strong. Greedy to wield her own power, herself, she demanded, “How are you using it? How are you borrowing it from me?”

“Play on, I said. Your friend, the Servant, is stirrin’. This is not for ’er to see. Not ever.”

“Why not?”

“I will give no weapons to my enemy.” Frog’s grimace was back. “Your friend is more a slave than this old woman ever was. Listen, Unar, you wished to heal this one. To help ’er, to repay what your people did to ’er. At least, you said so. I do not think you lied. This is your last chance.”

Unar filled her lungs. She raised the flute. It made no sound, no matter what she did with it, no matter how she blew into the thinnest, shortest hollow, the thickest, longest one, or any of the whittled wooden chambers in between.

“Is it morning?” Hasbabsah cried, startling and stirring, unable to open her gummed lids. “Am I blind?”

Unar tried to set the flute aside, but Frog snatched it from her hands.

“It’s a few hours before dawn,” Unar told Hasbabsah, grasping the old woman by her flailing arms. “You haven’t opened your eyes for many nights. I’ll bring you water and a cloth.”

“Ylly?” Hasbabsah croaked.

“I’m Unar. Ylly’s sleeping.”

Oos pushed through the embroidered hanging and gasped when she saw Hasbabsah.

“Is she awake? Is she getting better? Unar, what did you do?”

In the corner of her eye, Unar saw that Frog had returned to her pallet, curled under the blanket, breathing evenly as though she’d never left her bed.

“Nothing,” Unar said. “I did nothing.”

She gazed for a long moment at Oos, wondering why a child who had fallen from Canopy would name a Servant of Audblayin her enemy.

“You tried something,” Oos said.

“I try lots of things. I tried to be your friend.”

Oos swallowed. Her eyes grew round. They glittered. Her dark hair fell over her shoulder in a loose braid twined with ribbons. Marram must have given them to her. She wore her Servant’s robe, which she’d scrubbed as hard as she could, but the stains were still there.