Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(56)

“You saved me from the dayhunter. I never thanked you. I’m sorry. I’m thanking you now.”

“You’re welcome,” Unar said. “That’s what friends do.”

When Oos had gone, Unar sat on the floor beside Frog, cross-legged.

“You can stop pretending to be asleep. Oos is gone. And I’m curious to know why you called her your enemy but revealed yourself to me. You have magic. You serve a deity.”

That brought Frog, ferocious-eyed, out from under her blanket.

“I serve no deity!”

“Then how did you do that? Why did you do that?”

Frog’s gaze became unfocused, as if her thoughts dwelled on something distant and unpleasant. She shook herself, coming to a decision.

“We will speak of the how,” she said, “but not yet. As for the why, it was the way you jumped onto that demon’s back. It should have eaten you. You should have died. You made me think of a mother yellow-bellied glider I found once, in a hollow-tree nest with ’er litter.”

“A what?”

“Do you not know them? Do Warmed Ones have no use for furs? Them gliders with the rich pelts, fluffy tails, and wicked ivory claws. They are only so big”—Frog made a circle of her arms, like a pregnant woman’s belly—“but they have extra skin for glidin’ and the fur stretches to a proper-sized blanket for a grown woman’s bed. I tried to take the babies. The mother glider scratched me up, bitin’, tryin’ to lead me away. I did not want to cut ’er and ruin the pelt, but even after I blinded ’er and cut off ’er claws, she would not stop.”

Unar shifted uncomfortably. She’d killed animals before, but never tortured them. Frog, still staring into her past, went heedlessly on with her story.

“I returned to my new mother and asked ’er if she would do that for me. If a demon came, would she die tryin’ to defend me? And my new mother said no, she would not.”

Frog laughed quietly, closed her eyes, and shook her head.

Unar thought, My mother wouldn’t have suffered for me, either. She expected me to suffer for her.

“’Er answer did not please me,” Frog said. “I sulked until she told me my birth mother had not loved me more. Did I need proof? She told me where to go. Close to the barrier. Close to the crumblin’, worm-ridden branches where my birth mother resided. It was not Oxor’s magic that showed me the woman who gave me life, but Akkad’s magic, for my new mother knew the truth. My birth mother did not love me, yet I was fruit from ’er tree.”

“You saw your Canopian birth mother through the barrier?”

“I heard ’er, first,” Frog whispered, her gaze distant once again, hands still beneath the blanket. “Vomitin’. She vomited up ’er breakfast onto a branch below. Mushrooms she must have known were not safe to eat. She was skinny. Starving. And then she and the man who was my father fought to gather up the vomit and to eat it again.”

Unar was horrified. She reached for Frog’s shoulder, to comfort her, but the girl flinched away. Then something occurred to Unar.

“You called me a Warmed One. You asked if Warmed Ones had any use for furs. If you don’t serve a deity, if you don’t remember your life in Canopy, if you needed magic to find your birth mother, how could you know I was a Warmed One?”

Frog rolled her eyes.

“A slug with a skerrick of sensitivity would know.”

Unar said nothing, hungry to hear more, wanting Frog to say that Unar’s greatness shone around her like the halo of light around a lantern. But when the child spoke again, all she said was “I am tired. Leave me alone.” She lay back down and pulled her blanket up over her head. “You love your friend. You jumped on a demon’s back to save ’er. But she would not do the same for you. Next time, save your sacrifice for someone worthy. Unreturned love is for fools.”





THIRTY-FOUR

NINE BAGS full.

Unar stood and stretched, knuckling the small of her back.

“Where are you going?” Frog asked.

“To ask Esse for my knife back,” Unar replied.

“He is sleepin’. We are not allowed in that room.”

“I’m going to wake him.” Unar smiled tightly. She’d been looking forward to this moment. With her knife in hand, she could whittle a flute of her own. She could work out what it was that Frog had done and do it herself.

She hadn’t been alone with Frog since the night of Hasbabsah’s recovery, not properly. Not with Oos slumbering and so insensible to the use of magic. When Unar asked questions, Frog only glared at her, tight-lipped, and made a sleeping gesture; she would not discuss her power or who had taught her to use it until everyone else was asleep.

Unar went into the hearth room, where Hasbabsah lectured a reluctant Oos and an eager Ylly. Issi crawled around on a blanket on the side of the great table that was away from the fire, clinging to chair legs, drooling and biting the wood, occasionally trying to pull herself up.

“Have you two come to join my classroom at last?” Hasbabsah asked drily.

In the wake of her near death, Hasbabsah had taken to teaching the other two women everything she knew about medicinal plants. Her knowledge was not inconsequential; as an Understorian warrior, she had learned field medicine, and once a slave of the Garden, she couldn’t help but expand on what she’d been taught. She said that Ylly and Oos would never be warriors, so that they might as well learn something useful to trade in at the little villages where they must soon settle.