Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(60)

“You knew,” Unar repeated dumbly, hypnotised by the scene that Frog had painted in her mind, “you had a sister in the Garden.”

“Yes. Of course I am your sister. You are so dank.”

Unar rallied with the old anger she’d always relied on.

“And you,” she said, shaking Frog, “are so small. So good at pretending to be weak, but you healed Hasbabsah with magic. Who knows what else you can do? That yellowrain didn’t fall by accident, did it?”

“No.” Sullenly. “I cut it down.”

“But the crown was in Canopy. You said that the crown was in Canopy. You know how to pass through the barrier. You can take us home!”

“No!” Frog gripped Unar’s little fingers and bent them back until pain sent Unar stumbling in retreat. “I sent a bird to Canopy. One of my friends in Canopy lopped the crown for me. It was not a great enough tree to ’ave anybody livin’ in it. It was tall enough, though. I knew it could reach here from the place where I was waitin’.”

Frog rubbed her shoulders where Unar had pinned her.

“You sent a bird?” Unar recoiled again, but there wasn’t much room to move in the corridor. The opposite wall was at her back. “You have friends in Canopy, but not me? Not your own sister? Why didn’t you send a bird to me?”

Unar realised she was crying. She couldn’t scrub the tears away without Frog seeing. Frog was the child here, not Unar. Frog was the one who couldn’t remember her birth mother, not Unar. Frog should be the one crying.

“You were a Gardener by the time I found out your name. A keeper of Understorian slaves. ’Ow could I send a bird to you?”

“Keepers of slaves? Is that why you think Gardeners are enemies, unless they share your blood? That’s why Oos is your enemy, but not me? That’s why you’ll teach me, but not her?”

“I never said you were not my enemy.” Frog kicked her, hard, in the shin, but the tears that might have come to Unar’s eyes from the pain were already there. “I hadta meet you before I could reveal myself to you. I hadta know. My friends in Canopy know where to get gossip. Erid, Wife-of-Uranun, threw me away because she already had one daughter. She did not need another. She needed sons. What if you were like ’er? What if it was your idea to throw me away?”

Unar was shocked and repulsed.

“My idea? My idea? I hated them because they didn’t look for you. Not properly.”

“Now you know why they did not look. I was too small.” Frog folded her arms. “Small and useless.”

“Isin.” Unar tried to take Frog’s shoulders again, with gentleness and love this time. “Isin. Isin.”

“Stop sayin’ that name.” Frog pulled free. Tossed her head. “That is not my name.”

Unar slid down the wall of the corridor until she was sitting, wet and shivering, in the dark.

“Not your name?”

“Come back to the hearth room,” Frog said. “Get dry. Tell me about whatever it was that Esse showed you.”

“What Esse showed me,” Unar repeated hollowly.

“Come this way, broken eggs for brains, jumper on dayhunters’ backs. You will feel better in front of the fire.”

*

UNAR DRIED herself in front of the fire.

What if you were like ’er? What if it was your idea to throw me away?

Was she like her mother? She didn’t know. Had Mother been going blind? It was starting to make sense now. Mother staying home on days she should have gone to the forge. Mother making mistakes, flattening a finger of her left hand. Lashing out in a rage but striking the wall or floor beside Unar instead of Unar herself.

Unar and Frog made rope all day without exchanging another word.

Every now and again, Unar looked up from the wood-and-metal jig that Esse had set up for them—whose bore-knife did he steal to get the metal for these rotating hooks and pins?—to fix Frog’s solemn face again in her mind.

Not lost by accident. Abandoned with deliberation. Unar wanted to recoil from the thought but forced herself to face it instead. When she thought of their mother, Wife-of-Uranun, her starkest memories were of sudden rages. Now that Unar knew they had been provoked, not by Unar herself but by her mother’s terror of an inability to work and subsequent starvation, could she forgive the neglect that had led to Isin falling?

No. Not ever.

Isin could have helped their father, just as Unar had. Fuel finding could have kept them from starving, couldn’t it? Only, the wood god, Esh, had been weak that year and the rain goddess, Ehkis, had been strong. The wood was wet and would not dry. Neither Unar nor Father could cut wet wood with a blunt axe.

Your belly’s speaking, Erid. Eat these, Father had murmured.

Why so few? Mother had answered. Unar had thought she sounded cold, but what if it was the hollowness of despair? She’s fit only for the block.

Unar had run, at last, not knowing that her mother was frightened of the forge because the world had become a blur.

Frog had said, She knew I would not be able to do the work. She thought I looked small. For my age. She wanted sons.

How did Frog know that? What messages had she received from Canopy? What spies had she sent to peer into Uranun’s rented hovel? Unar wondered if Father had been tempted to send Wife-of-Uranun to Audblayin’s emergent to ask for a male child. But what gifts could Uranun have sent to the Garden? He had stolen and eaten his own child’s mushrooms. Sacrifice was hardly in his nature.