Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(65)

She had her magic back. That was all that mattered. How could Esse make her angry? Even exhaustion couldn’t lead her to lose her temper today. She had known, from that first moment in the hovel, and again at the Gates of the Garden, that she had an important purpose; that she was born to serve a god. Let others lose their magic when they fell. She would never lose hers. Not for long, anyway. She squashed the urge to tell them the baby would be well by the following morning. Frog had promised to show her how to heal Issi by magic later that night.

“You will prepare the extract,” Hasbabsah said to Oos. “I know you have memorised the method. It is time to demonstrate what you have learned.”

“Yes, Ser—I mean, yes, Hasbabsah,” Oos said quickly, colour flooding her cheeks at the lapse, but Hasbabsah didn’t comment on it.

Unar thought, So obedient, Oos. So obedient, my sister, and too stubborn to teach me, but I won’t hold it against you. I will take you with me to Canopy when I go, no matter what Frog thinks.

Then she remembered Oos and Ylly writhing around under their too-small blanket. Maybe Oos wouldn’t want to come with Unar by the time she was ready to go. Frog had much to show her before that day of departure.

Perhaps at the end of the monsoon, when all of them would be forced to leave the banished hunters’ lair. Yes, that would be a good time to go.

In another room, Issi screamed. Ylly got up from the table to go to her, with Oos right behind her. When Oos sang a lullaby to calm the child, Unar sweated from the effort of not wresting the sound away and sinking it into something just to see it change, just to be sure she was as great as she had been before.

Frog sank the tines of her fork into the back of Unar’s hand, and she yelped.

“Watch what you’re doing, Frog!”

“Sorry.”

“Why don’t you go sweep the water out of the fishing room, if you’ve nothing better to do?”

“And what will you be doin’?”

Unar grunted.

“Making myself some new clothes. Esse keeps reminding me that I’m no longer a Gardener. It’s time I put off red and green and put on something darker. More depressing. Better suited to my future life as a … what did you suggest, Esse? A floor sander? A mattress stuffer?”

Her bitterness was feigned. Inside, her spirit danced. She was greater than a Gardener now, for no mere Gardener could operate here, divided so sharply from the seat of Audblayin’s power.

If Frog’s name was a testament to her intent—that she move in a single direction, and that movement towards the sun, in step with an Understorian invasion or whatever it was she planned—then perhaps Unar should take the name Unaranu, because she would not stay down. She would feel that warmth on her skin again.





THIRTY-NINE

THE RILLS of Oos and Marram’s music ran through the room where Unar reclined comfortably on a coil of rope.

It was ten days since she and Frog had crept into the storeroom, stood by Issi’s crib, and healed the chill that had taken root inside her. Frog had done it, but this time Unar had been able to watch closely, to see with her second sight what her little sister had done, and she knew now that she could do it again. All parts of the body, it seemed, were potential seeds, not just the ones that came together to make children, and Unar could give them what they needed to grow, and in the growing, to heal over the broken places.

Frog had said sternly, You must remember to stop them from growin’.

Unar had asked, Why? If this much growth recoups her usual strength, would it not be better to make her twice as strong?

Frog’s face had shown panic. You are a deep well, she said, deeper than your friend, deeper than anythin’ I have ever seen. With Oos, this warnin’ would not be necessary. She has not the strength, but you … you would not make Issi twice as strong. You would make ’er misshapen, maybe even kill ’er.

Unar said calmly, I thought my powers were useless. I thought you couldn’t use them against enemies. Whoever these supposed enemies are. I thought you wanted me to kill.

So dank, Frog had said through clenched teeth. So dunderheaded. You cannot heal this way without love. Can you not feel it? You love Issi, or you could not heal ’er. Maybe you do not even admit to yourself that you love ’er, but you do, or this would not have worked. The old woman, too, or I could not have used your strength to heal ’er. Do you love my enemies? Can you fall for strangers quickly enough to kill them?

You said Oos was your enemy. I love Oos.

Frog’s eyes had narrowed at Ylly’s sleeping form.

You are not the only one. The ex-slave and the young hunter love ’er, too, but they are both fools and so are you.

In the ten elapsed days, Unar had conferred with Frog twice more, both times by the river in the fishing room. Frog had allowed her to transform Esse’s rope from a woven thing to a single, unbreakable strand by growing the vestiges of life deep in the fibres into an interlocking matrix that still made Unar shake her head with awe.

“Does this mean I love the rope?” Unar had asked, somewhat clumsily, hating to appear stupid but wanting to understand.

“You want my advice,” Frog said darkly, “do not love anyone. Or anythin’.”

“I love you, Frog.”

“Lucky for me if I should be wounded and need healin’!” Frog tossed her head and folded her arms. “I do not love you.”